By Melissa Stern
DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. (CBS46) A local woman donated her kidney to her husband in hopes of giving their family a better life, but the transplant failed.
CBS46 reporter Melissa Stern spoke to the Lithonia family about why they’re now pleading for help finding him another kidney.
Barry Presley is a father, husband, Navy veteran and friend, but he says he’s living on borrowed time and hoping someone can help him get his life back.
“It was just getting, overtime, slowly but surely getting worse,” said Barry Presley Sr.
Thirty-nine-year-old Barry Presley spends most of his days tending to his kidney failure.
“I do dialysis three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday for four hours,” Presley added.
He spends as much time as he can with his wife, Marshina, and his two young children. He can’t work right now between doctors’ appointments and just trying to survive.
“Every day is a fight for me,” Presley said, “Every day is a constant struggle for me to do day to day activities…to breath, to walk, all sorts of things normal people do.”
He’s been on the kidney donation list for more than five years.
“We went from a two income home to a one income home, and now it’s more of me being intermittent FMLA, because Monday, Wednesday, Friday I make sure he gets to dialysis, and I have to pick him up, which means I leave work, and I have to go back, and I miss days when he’s sick, he’s in and out of the hospital, and that’s money that we’re missing,” said his wife, Marshina.
In April of 2014, Marshina donated her kidney to her husband.
“Just to know that he would be here for his kids, that was my main concern,” she said.
“They were doing a lot of lab work, a lot of people coming in and checking on us, stuff like that, and through the lab work, they said it’s not looking like it’s supposed to look,” added Presley.
The transplant failed.
“Your body can only take so much of that over the years, so I don’t know, I’m basically living on borrowed time,” said Presley.
Now, the family is hoping someone else can help them.
For more information and ways to contact the Presley family, email [email protected].
Read the original story on CBS46.com.
