PIKEVILLE, Ky. – University of Pikeville men’s basketball coach Kelly Wells’ story of his fight with kidney disease was featured by national columnist Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com on Thursday.
The piece, titled “Life After Near Death”, shares personal segments from Wells’ battle with the disease, as well as other stories of organ donation in Kentucky.
Wells is entering his ninth season at UPIKE, putting together a 179-78 record with a national championship in 2011.
Here is an excerpt:
His name is Kelly Wells, and he has three kidneys. Two of them weren’t originally his, and one of those doesn’t work. The only kidney that is his? It doesn’t work either. Kelly Wells is a miracle of modern science and organ donation, and he’s not a bad basketball coach either. He won a 2003 high school state championship in Kentucky and the 2011 NAIA national title at Pikeville (Ky.) University, and he’s only 43 years old, and he hopes to add more titles. And more kidneys.
“They’re supposed to last about 18 years,” Wells says of the two kidneys he has received, one in 2004 and another in late June. “I was looking at myself in the mirror the other day and said, ‘I don’t have much palette left to do any art work.’ If I’m blessed enough to need another one, they’ll have to take one out to make room. Maybe they’ll take out two or three.”
That would ruin Wells’ macabre parlor trick, where he invites someone to poke him below the ribs and feel all the useless organs in there. Kidneys tend to be toward the back, but the surgeon put each of Wells’ transplanted kidneys closer to the front.
“More accessible,” Wells says, and not just for doctors.
“You can push it and feel it,” he says. “It’s kind of weird, and you have to push pretty hard, but you’ll feel them in there. My left native kidney is still attached with blood flow going through it. It doesn’t do anything, but it’s still there for — I don’t know. For giggles, I guess.”
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Read Life After Near Death by clicking here.
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