Like plenty of stories, Joe Barrett and Brad Szczecinski's starts with a girl. But this isn't going where you think.
Szczecinski began attending Park Community Church in Lincoln Park because of this girl. He also was suffering from IgA Nephropathy, a rare kidney disease that affects, as he put it "white, European-descended males in their 20s, which is what I was." Dealing with the disease was too tough for the girl, and she broke up with Szczecinski. That's where Barrett comes in.
"One day, somebody saw me in a hall, like out in a hallway, like, 'Hey, everything OK?' I'm like 'No, not really.' I explained what was going on and that I had recently started dialysis and I wasn't feeling all that well," Szczecinski, now president of Newport Coast Asset Management, said. "So he introduced me to Joe, who at the time was leading the prayer ministry at the church, because they figured, if I'm sick, what else do you need, people to pray for you."
Once Barrett, then 46, learned of Szczecinski's need, he volunteered to give a kidney, purely, Barrett said, as the last in line. He knew Szczecinski, then 29, had plenty of friends and family who had offered to be potential donors. But one by one, those options were eliminated. In the meantime, the two men were getting better acquainted.
"We both have careers, we're running around, so I found out when he was at the dialysis unit and I would show up just because I knew he was sitting there for hours alone," Barrett, president and founder of Barrett Trade & Finance Group, LLC, said. "I'd come by and we'd talk for a little bit. Which allowed me to see dialysis for the first time, and I'm telling you, I don't know how familiar you are with it, but my assumption was miracle machine, everything's rosy for all these people, you just sit there and go through it. It's a nightmare. It's a horrible thing to experience."
Barrett said about 60 people were in that dialysis unit, including one who really stood out to the pair. "Remember that kinda short, looked-like-a-football-player kid?" he asked Szczecinski. "That was maybe 25, 22 maybe? He looked like every small-town America's football guy, right?"
The guy was angry-justifiably so. "He knew he was getting closer and closer to death, and no one in his family would dare [donate]," Barrett said. "And he was an aggressive kind of guy, and I could tell after he met me and heard my story with Brad, that I'd be willing to do it, you can bet family dinners got a lot worse at home. 'Cause he was not shy about saying, 'Why aren't you doing this?' And even with that kind of reaching-out approach, nobody would do it. Because everyone was afraid." The young man died about three weeks before Szczecinski received his new kidney.
Eventually it became clear that the last in line also was Szczecinski's only option. He had lost about 50 pounds from the kidney disease, and was in the ICU for the final 2 months before his surgery. Barrett said his parents, at first, were nervous about him donating to a near-stranger, but came around once he taught them enough about the process. Szczecinski's, naturally, were over the moon-especially his mom.
"[She] called him her angel, something like that, and every event in his life since, whether it was our kidney anniversary or his birthday, would send him some type of angel thing," Szczecinski said. "Including ceramic or stone angels. Perfect for a high-rise condo."
Szczecinski has been living with Barrett's kidney since 1996; they celebrated their 18th "kidney anniversary" in November and make it a point to get together at least once a month.
"My quality of life has been back to where it was before, but better because maybe I'm more appreciative of things," Szczecinski said. Since 1998, he's been active in the Transplant Games of America, a kind of Olympics for people who have undergone transplants, in sports such as basketball, swimming, golf, cycling and running. The Transplant Games also are where this story comes full circle.
"I was telling the story [at the Games]," Szczecinski said, "and there was a guy in the back who was like, 'Wait a minute, so you met a guy at church, and you didn't really know him, and he offered to give you a kidney ... this is gonna sound weird, but is his name Joe Barrett?'"