Ruth Woodhall, a Porter Regional Hospital Food Service Professional, is always smiling and brightening the days of patients with her friendly face and kind personality. She is the first friendly face a patient sees in the morning as she delivers their morning meal.
Woodhall said, “I love my job and I love people. I love to make people smile and I wanted to do something where I could make a difference.”
Woodhall is more than just a friendly face though; she regularly goes out of her way giving a listening ear or going the extra mile to give a card or kind word to lift the spirits of her patients when she is bringing them their meals.
Woodhall has always shown a desire to do what she can to try to make a difference. From the time she was in high school she signed up to be on the bone marrow donor registry after she heard the plight of a little girl when her family made a plea for a bone marrow match. She wasn’t a match for the little girl, but she was a match to her cousin years later when he made a plea to family and friends for a kidney.
Alan Mitchell is Woodhalls’ cousin. He had been diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD).
Mitchell explained, “On my 50th birthday I went to the doctor actually for something else but the doctor found that I had PKD and told me that I would eventually need a kidney transplant and thirteen years later that day came. In 2007 I had a kidney transplant.”
Mitchell and Woodhall, even though they were cousins, barely knew each other.
Mitchell said, “I think I met her at an aunt’s funeral once.”
“I knew he was my mothers’ cousin,” Woodhall said.
The unfamiliarity didn’t stop Woodhall from stepping forward to be a donor.
“My mother received a letter asking if she or anyone in the family might want to be a donor. I knew right away I wanted to do it,” Woodhall said.
It wasn’t so easy asking family and friends for a kidney Mitchell explained.
“I agonized over the question; I mean can you imagine asking friends and family that question? Would you give me a body part; a kidney? It took two months after writing that letter before I could bring myself to mail it out to friends and family,” Mitchell said. “On July 27, 2005 I received an email from Ruth saying, ‘I will give you my kidney.’ That letter changed my life.”
Woodhall and Mitchell met face-to-face over lunch with Woodhalls’ mother and husband to discuss moving forward with the transplant.
After meeting Mitchell, Woodhall said, “After meeting him in person it just solidified my decision to do this.”
Mitchell commented, “Three months to the day after receiving that email, they took out Ruth’s kidney and put it in me. It was a life giving gift.”
He added, “The impact of that gift is that I am a father of three daughters and grandfather with eight grand kids and I have had seven years with them that I would not have had. Ruth is the most amazing, giving woman or person that I have ever met, and when I think about this now I tear up because how do you ever begin to say thank you? But I say it over and over and over because she gave me my life back.”
Woodhall said, “People say I am an angel or a hero but I don’t feel that way I did it just because I could. It’s really hard to wrap your head around the thought that you helped save someone’s life; it’s too much. I did it because I wanted him to see his grandchildren. He still had so much to offer; he was a father and grandfather and the world would be missing someone fantastic. I didn’t want that to go to waste.”
After the transplant, Woodhall said she has been rewarded with not the acknowledgement of donating her kidney but with a close bond and friendship that she and Mitchell have gained. Each year they get together to celebrate what they call his “Re-birthday”.
She said, “It’s a special bond that I can’t describe. It’s a beautiful friendship. After I donated my kidney I felt like that was my purpose in life, you know besides being a wife and a mom, doing this made my life complete.”
Going out of her way to make a difference, sharing an encouraging word, having a smiling face and giving the most selfless gift, a life giving donation, her kidney is why Ruth Woodhall is this week’s Valpo Life in the Spotlight.