The secret remained buried in her heart for four endless months.
Toshira Maldonado-McIntosh wanted to believe the answer to her prayers was real, even as she watched the dialysis treatments drain her husband.
Even as she watched Roy McIntosh only grow weaker.
The father of five, a once-burly amateur boxer, had joined the deceased-donor kidney list in October 2020, shortly after a serious case of COVID-19 aggravated his lifelong renal problems and his kidneys began to fail.
In December 2021, the Mays Landing man was still waiting.
So Maldonado-McIntosh called on higher powers God and Facebook.
Please pray for my husband that God sends a type B+ living kidney donor to him, she wrote on The Laughing Christian group page Dec. 21, referring to his blood type. We believe in God for a miracle.
Her answer came about 30 minutes later.
A complete stranger from Texas offered more than prayers when she read the anguished post. Heather Schaefer, 33, offered one of her kidneys.
But Maldonado-McIntosh couldnt tell McIntosh, 48. Not yet. Not until she knew the offer was real. Not until she knew Schaefer was a match.
So she kept it a secret.
I thought it was a hoax, said Maldonado-McIntosh, a 42-year-old child welfare social worker and McIntoshs wife of 24 years.
But with one Facebook post, a woman from Texas by way of Scotland was about to change the life of a West Indian man from the Jersey Shore.
On June 8, doctors at Medical City Fort Worth Transplant Institute in Texas removed Schaefers left kidney in a four-hour procedure. The ice-packed organ was flown to New Jersey, where doctors John Radomski and Nasser Youssef implanted it in McIntosh that same day at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden.
Heather Schaefer and Roy McIntosh finally meet in person Aug. 3, after she donated a kidney to him from halfway across the country. She traveled to New Jersey two months after their transplant surgeries.Nina Soifer
In a society fractured along the fault lines of race and politics and culture, a white woman from the reddest of red states donated a vital organ to a complete stranger 1,500 miles away, a Black man from blue-state New Jersey.
And she did it for just one reason. To help someone.
Im grateful and thankful for the gift of life she gave me a total stranger, said a visibly moved McIntosh as he sat in his vast backyard behind his cream-colored, four-bedroom ranch home. Heather said to me, When God tugs at your heart, how can you tell him no?
She has faith. I had faith. It just came together.
He was the last to know about the donor who would change his life.
When Schaefer was finally approved April 8, a Virtua transplant coordinator informed McIntosh.
I called my wife, who was driving, and I said, You need to pull over! said the 6-foot-3 man with a shaved head and goatee, flashing a smile to his wife as they relived the moment.
Of course, I already knew, Maldonado-McIntosh said.
Thats when she filled him in on all that had led up to the news.
McIntosh now feels like a new man, he says.
He returned to his job Sept. 7 as a plant engineer at Virtua Health & Wellness Center in Camden.
I have more energy. My blood pressure has come down. My doctor has given me the OK to go back to the gym. I can ride my bike again, said McIntosh, whose children range in age from 10 to 25. We walk two miles on the Atlantic City boardwalk twice a week.
Roy McIntosh, a 48-year-old father of five, with his wife Toshira Maldonado-McIntosh; daughters Jacinth, 13, left; Jni, 22, second right; and Julia, 13, right; and his son Judah, 17, at their Mays Landing home. Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com A long fight
McIntosh never seemed to have it easy.
He suffered from kidney problems since he was born the possible result of X-rays done on his mother while she was pregnant with him, the McIntoshes said.
His mother was a 15-year-old immigrant having a baby in America, and she didnt have the right testing or proper prenatal care, said Maldonado-McIntosh, who added that McIntoshs mother hails from Grenada and Trinidad and his father from Trinidad.
His health only suffered further during the three years he bounced from foster home to foster home as a young child. McIntosh endured neglect and abuse, he says.
I dont want to get into it, he said. I was in four foster homes. It was bad.
Later, McIntosh moved into the Newark home of a maternal aunt, then went to live with his mother when he turned 13. While bladder problems and pediatric high blood pressure often sent him to the hospital, a more serious health problem went undetected.
McIntosh wasnt properly diagnosed with renal issues until 2017. After suffering congestive heart failure, he was told his kidneys were barely functioning. He underwent an eight-hour surgery to reconstruct his ureter, a tube that forces urine from the kidneys to the bladder. During that surgery, a doctor discovered he had pelvic lipomatosis, a rare disease in which excess fat develops in the abdomen.
When COVID-19 landed him in the hospital in the summer of 2020, his kidney function plunged. Dialysis became his only option.
A doctor told him his kidneys were only functioning at 15%, McIntosh said.
He began undergoing dialysis three times a week for five hours at a time.
He lost weight. He could barely keep up with activities he enjoyed, such as working out and cutting down trees on his property.
But McIntosh, an amiable man with an easy smile and can-do spirit, had faith that buoyed him through his darkest moments. Even when no donor was in the offing, he envisioned having a new, healthy kidney.
I thanked God for the kidney before I got one, before I had a donor, he said, explaining that if you speak to God as if youve already gotten the blessing youre hoping for, it will come to pass. I said, Thank you for the kidney you gave me.
In the meantime, McIntosh continued living the best life he could.
I kept working. I went to church every week. I did yard work, McIntosh said. I had the will to live.
I had my family.
Roy McIntosh wears a West Indian bracelet that symbolizes strength. He gifted the same bracelet to a woman in Texas after she donated a kidney to him.Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
As the transplant neared, McIntosh reached for that faith. He was confident he would recover.
I said, Gods in charge. I had faith it would go well, he said.
Meanwhile, Schaefer a mother of two, ages 6 and 4 had run into some resistance. When she told her husband, Nicholas a U.S. Army captain (soon-to-be major) and Blackhawk helicopter medevac pilot that she wanted to donate a kidney to a stranger, he was concerned.
Would the donation affect their ability to have more kids? Was she risking her own health? What if her remaining kidney failed?
Schaefer was resolute.
She had always wanted to help others. She had done extensive research on being a donor and concluded it was safe, she said.
Her husband, deployed in Europe, eventually came around. By the surgery, he supported her decision.
Schaefer underwent a battery of tests to ensure she was a good candidate and her kidney was a match for McIntosh. She began posting a series of videos on YouTube, Adventures with My Kidney, explaining her journey as a donor.
Once upon a time, kidney donors and recipients needed to be in the same hospital for surgeons to perform transplants. But a National Kidney Registry program allows an individual to donate a kidney without traveling to the recipients transplant center.
It is easier for the donor, said Jennie Roggio, the living kidney donor transplant coordinator for Virtua Advanced Transplant & Organ Health, in a statement. Heather was able to complete her tests and prep work close to home. The Texas hospital approved her, and then sent us her chart to accept her kidney for donation.
The night before the surgeries, nearly 30 people most of them relatives and friends of McIntosh and Schaefer held a prayer vigil over Zoom.
Schaefer received a text from Roggio the next evening, while in the hospital n Texas after her kidney was removed. It was being implanted in McIntosh at that very moment.
I was so happy, said Schaefer, who was born to American parents in Scotland, where she lived until she was 16.
McIntosh was not in any danger of dying when he received the kidney transplant, said Radomski, the transplant surgeon. But it likely will prolong his life considerably.
People who get a kidney transplant live longer than people on dialysis, he said, adding that dialysis is time-consuming and disruptive to ones life.
Heather Schaefer and Roy McIntosh finally meet in person Aug. 3, after she donated a kidney to him from halfway across the country. She traveled to New Jersey with her two children two months after the transplant.Nina Soifer
No one has to tell McIntosh.
My kids are happy to have me home more now, he said. I used to spend 15 hours a week getting dialysis.
McIntosh also was fortunate to receive a kidney from a living donor, Radomski said. Otherwise, his wait for a transplant could have stretched to six years. Between 2004 and 2017, the waiting list for a deceased-donor kidney grew from 58,000 to more than 92,000, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Health experts say the shortage of kidney donations constitutes a public health crisis.
Deceased-donor kidney transplants account for two-thirds of the 20,000 transplants performed each year in the U.S., according to the Mayo Clinic. But transplant recipients experience better outcomes with living donors, research has found.
On April 15 a week after she was approved as his donor Schaefer and McIntosh saw each other for the first time through a FaceTime call.
I was crying. Heather was crying. My wife was crying, McIntosh said.
On Aug. 3, Schaefer and McIntosh having both regained their strength from the transplant surgeries finally met in person. She traveled to New Jersey with her two children.
I said to Heather, Youre my sister, McIntosh said. I have a piece of her in me.
The McIntoshes gave Schaefer a West Indian silver bangle with fist ends, symbolizing strength. McIntosh wears a matching bracelet on his right wrist. Schaefer has invited them to spend this Thanksgiving at her home in Harker Heights, a central Texas city of 33,000 sitting between Dallas and San Antonio.
We feel like a family now, she said.
Jni McIntosh, 22, is thrilled to see her father healthier than hes been in a long time.
He always said, Honey, this is going to be OK. Were going to push through this together, she said. He would have his sad days. On those days hed be quiet. He wasnt as talkative or active as he was on other days. But those days were so few.
The substitute teacher said she was moved by the selflessness of a stranger from Texas giving her father another chance at life.
I hope she inspires others to do what she did and save a life, Jni McIntosh said.
Jni McIntosh, 22, hugs her father Roy McIntosh, as he waters his garden at their Mays Landing home. Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
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Elizabeth Llorente may be reached at ELlorente@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @Liz_Llorente.
