What can a 61-year old donor and a 71-year old kidney recipient do eight months after transplant surgery?  How about fly?!  This fun pair, Beth Willstrop and Bob Golden, recently took to the air at an indoor skydiving center.

Their story is an interesting one which began a decade ago on a dating site that truly delivered a perfect match.

They met through the online dating site Match.com, and while this San Antonio couple might not have had the spark to make a love match, their lives are forever linked through a remarkable journey that led to a trip not down the aisle but instead into an operating room.

“I really need to let Match.com know that’s not the match I meant,” joked Beth Willstrop regarding her match with her now dear friend Bob Golden.

Ten years ago, when this couple met, they knew right off the bat they might not have a romantic match.  Instead they formed a special and enduring friendship, and when Bob needed a kidney Beth decided to go all in and help her friend in need.

At the time, Bob was in stage five kidney failure and opted to forego dialysis and wait for an organ.

Last Christmas, a holiday that is also Bob’s birthday, the team at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa  put together this video of Beth and Bob’s journey which also highlights CHRISTUS Health’s Transplant Institute where the couple’s surgery took place.

 CHRISTUS Transplant Institute: By the Numbers

• Last year, nearly 6,000 transplants were made possible by living donors.
• CHRISTUS Transplant Institute has performed more than 600 kidney transplants with overwhelming success.
• The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients reports a 1 year graft survival rate of 91 percent for CHRISTUS Transplant Institute.
• National wait times to receive a kidney transplant have become onerous for patients. South Texas wait times are some of the longest in the U.S.
• Nationally, some 31.5 percent of patients waiting will have received their transplant by 3 years, but only 14.2 percent will have been transplanted in South Texas.
• Nationally, 7 percent of patients on the kidney transplant list each year die while waiting.

To learn more about CHRISTUS Transplant Institute and the CHRISTUS program, Paired with Hope™, visit CHRISTUS Transplant Institute