Hales really were 'made for each other'
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___SAINT JO--In the Garden of Eden, Adam gave his mate a rib so she might have life.
___In Texas, Patty gave Ronny a kidney for the same reason.
___Patty and Ronny Hales' lives developed a routine--one built as much around his youth ministry at First Baptist Church in Saint Jo as around the kidney dialysis he underwent three days a week. He had weakened to the point those two things were almost all he did.
___His life wasn't always that way. He was full of energy before 1991, when he started suffering periodic episodes of fever and backaches. His doctor suspected kidney stones.
___In July 1997, he ran a 104-degree fever and stayed delirious for a week.
___A kidney specialist diagnosed Berger's Disease, which usually works slowly, often persisting up to 20 years before damaging kidneys badly. Since his first episode came in 1991, the doctor estimated his situation would not become critical for at least another decade.
___Less than two years later, however, in 1999, he started dialysis. "They finally decided he must have had the disease working on his kidneys for a long time before he was aware of it," Mrs. Hale said.
___The dialysis helped her husband survive, but not much else.
___"You can live on dialysis, but you don't ever really have a good day," he said. "Even on the days when you don't have to go to dialysis, you still don't feel well."
___He continued working but wasn't able to keep the same pace as before. When he came home, he fell asleep in his chair in the den.
___"My kids were seeing a lot of me. I just didn't have my eyes open for any of it."
___The Hales also learned how important kidneys are. They help regulate blood pressure, cholesterol and other body chemicals. Hale had to take 13 prescriptions to do what his body no longer could.
___In March 2000, friends finally persuaded him to take disability and stop going to work. Even though he was exhausted, it was a hard decision to make.
___"I was telling myself, 'I'm going to live a normal life,'" he recalled. "But in reality I wasn't living a normal life. I was going to work, going to dialysis, going to church and sleeping."
___In some ways the decision was made for them, Mrs. Hale said. "It was beginning to be evident that he really wasn't feeling well. I don't know how many other people knew how bad he was feeling, because any time we were away from the house, he was upbeat and happy. When we were home, he was asleep."
___Hale refused to give up his youth ministry, though.
___"You get to where you feel like you're fighting this invisible thing," he explained. "It had already made me quit work; I wasn't going to let it beat me out of my youth ministry too."
___He made his wife promise to wake him for church on Wednesday nights, but "there were a lot of Wednesday nights when I'd tell him: 'Why don't you just stay here and rest? I'll take care of things tonight,'" she reported. "But he would always say, 'No, I'm going.'"
___Pastor Keith Rogers came to the Saint Jo church last August. He felt an immediate affinity for the Hales, and the time he spent with them enabled him to see that despite the dialysis, Hale was weakening.
___"In the time I'd known Ronny, his physical health was really deteriorating," Rogers said. "You could look at him and tell he was a really sick man."
___Before Hale could get on a national transplant list, he had to exhaust the options available to him--organ donation from family or close friends.
___All of Hale's blood relatives were crossed off quickly because medical conditions precluded them from being donors.
___Twenty people in Saint Jo, however, told him they would give him a kidney if medical tests proved them to be acceptable donors.
___Mrs. Hale, however, had other ideas. She wanted to be the first person on the list to be tested. Hospital personnel were skeptical but agreed to allow her to be tested first.
___"She said, 'If you want to test those other 20 people first, fine, but you're just wasting time, because I'm the donor,'" Hale recalled.
___"There was never a doubt in her mind. She was confident, and she was at peace with her decision. Somebody bigger than me had told her something," Hale said.
___And indeed, she was the match he needed.
___They anticipated waiting three or four months to get the surgery scheduled, but that timetable shifted when someone cancelled. The transplant took place just 30 days later.
___"This thing is from start to finish a modern-day miracle," Rogers proclaimed.
___Hale agrees. "People tell me, 'Boy, you sure are a lucky.' But I tell them luck had nothing to do with it."
___The experience has taken Hale far along his spiritual journey. "I am way closer to God than I ever thought I could be," he said. "You have to be when there are things that are totally out of your control."
___He also has a new appreciation for the helper God gave him as his wife--just the right person to give him a new lease on life.
The Baptist Standard
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