Tyler May and his dad Owen May find special meaning in March’s designation as National Kidney Month and April as National Donate Month.

On Jan. 6, Tyler, an Ahwatukee native now living in Chicago, and Owen, a 34-year Ahwatukee resident married to a former family physician and renown mindful eating lecturer-author, participated in an unusual kidney swap.

Tyler, 34, received a new kidney that day from a Tennessee patient while Owen donated one of his to another Tennessee patient.

How they ended up in this rare series of surgeries began with what Tyler figured was just a bad cold last April.

“I went into urgent care a couple of times throughout the time that I was sick for the first week or so,” said Tyler, who moved in 2017 to Chicago, where he is a project management consultant for a company that produces software and data projects.

“I think it was the 10-day mark and they started me on some antibiotics to hopefully get rid of whatever it was that caused the issue,” he recalled.

But that didn’t work either – and Tyler was admitted to the hospital for treatment of what was diagnosed as a severe upper-respiratory infection.

Within a matter of days, doctors gave him the shocking news: He would need to be on dialysis at least for a few months. His creatine level – which measures kidney function – was 15 mg/dL – far higher than normal level of around .06 to 1.3. 

“I was told that with acute cases like mine – that came on rather suddenly instead of a slow deterioration of kidney over like decades – they typically put you on dialysis for about three months just to see if you’re going to recover and how much you’re going to recover,” explained Tyler, who at 34 was in good health.

For three or four months of dialysis, first three days a week and then two, Tyler recalled, “We did see quite a bit of recovery. But around August and September, the improvements stalled out.”

By September, his nephrologist gave him the second shock: he recommended a transplant. 

“He said he had never in his entire career seen the kind of damage he saw in my biopsy,” Tyler said, adding the specialist warned the damage was so severe that he risked kidney failure if he didn’t get a healthier organ.

Tyler’s family had already swung into action. Now, they kicked into high gear. 

Deep roots

Tyler, a 2009 Desert Vista High School graduate with degrees in business and creative writing from the University of Arizona (2013) and a degree in video game production from the Central Florida University, comes from a family with deep roots in Ahwatukee.

His maternal grandmother, Dixie Shirley, was principal of Kyrene de la Sierra Elementary School; she and her husband George lived in Ahwatukee for more than 33 years.

His maternal grandfather and maternal stepmother, Bill and Janie Riddle, owned the now-closed Valle Luna Restaurant on Ray and 48th Street and four still-operating Valle Luna venues, including the one on Ray and Dobson roads.

His mother was a long-time family physician in Ahwatukee until she “retired” in 2006 to start her company, Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating Programs and Training. She is now a world-renown author and lecturer on mindful eating.

His father is a professional chef who currently works at AJ’s Fine Foods, just across the I-10 in Chandler.

His sister, Elyse May-McFarlin, graduated from Desert Vista in 2012, then University of Arizona in 2016 with degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology and science education, and Unity College in 2022 with a master’s in Professional Science: Marine Science, Conservation of Marine Mammals. 

She lives in Oregon with her husband Darrien McFarlin, a pharmacist who also graduated from Desert Vista and University of Arizona.

Michelle immediately went to Chicago to care for Tyler for about a month when his dialysis began.

After he was told his kidneys would not recover, he selected the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center.

Friends and relatives completed online screenings to become living kidney donors.

His parents and a cousin, Tori Sheldon-Riddle, went to Chicago for full-day donor testing.

While Michelle’s blood type was compatible with Tyler’s, making her a potential match, doctors told her she needed both her kidneys because one was too small and she would jeopardize her own health giving up the larger one.

Owen, 65, was a Blood Type O, making him a “universal donor.” 

But doctors felt Tyler would be better off getting a kidney from a younger donor.

So, father and son in November joined the Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation, a nationwide registry that matches a donor-recipient pair with another donor-recipient pair.

Doctors hoped to find a younger donor for Tyler and an older recipient for Owen to complete a “transplant swap.”

It took only days to score a hit.

The swap

In December, Owen flew to Chicago for pre-operative testing  and then returned to Ahwatukee for the holidays.

On Jan. 3, he and Michelle returned to Chicago for the surgeries.

On Jan. 6, both dad and son went under the knife.

Owen’s left kidney was removed and his left kidney, which they playfully named “Lefty,” was flown to Tennessee.

Meanwhile, the kidney from the Tennessee donor was flown to Chicago, where Dr. Sattish N. Nadig used a procedure he pioneered called the AWAKE kidney transplant.

“Tyler was awake during the procedure, similar to patients undergoing a C-section,” Michelle said. “This procedure results in shorter hospital stays and more rapid recovery but is currently only being performed by Dr. Nadig.”

Both Owen and Tyler were in the hospital overnight, then discharged home to Tyler’s Chicago loft. 

Michelle and Tyler’s sister were their caretakers because Owen and Tyler needed round-the-clock care for the first week.

“Within a week, they were able to bundle up and take walks outside,” Michelle said.

After three weeks, Michelle and Owen returned to Ahwatukee. 

Grateful and gratified

Tyler and Owen are both  grateful and gratified by what has happened this year.

Recalling what led up to the operation, Tyler recalled how hectic life was, especially once matches were found for him and his dad.

There were numerous hospitals, numerous evaluations.

 “When you go on to the transplant list,” he explained, “you are basically entering the list to be given a kidney from potentially an altruistic donor or deceased donor, and those are all in pretty short supply.” 

“So they do a lot to evaluate whether or not you are truly a good candidate for a transplant,” he said. 

“And those evaluations are definitely health evaluations, like if you had substantial underlying conditions, if it seemed like potentially what caused your kidney damage originally was untreatable and would likely happen again. They would ask me things about following routines and my habit behavior.”

There was another more emotional side to all this, too, he said.

“I had all my family and friends applying to be donors and that was just very strange. No one wants people to make a sacrifice as big as that for them and at the same time you’re just incredibly grateful and humble that these people care enough about you that they are willing to go through this process.”

In the months that followed the operation, Tyler said, “I work remotely, which definitely helped a lot in my ability to return to work.” 

“But honestly, throughout that entire time, I felt completely normal, other than the fact that I had a tube coming out of my chest that connected directly to my heart.”

Because he was advised to avoid crowded areas for at least a year, Tyler was grateful that he works remotely.

Both he and his father couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds for six weeks after the surgery.

For the rest of his life, Tyler must take drugs to prevent his body from rejecting his kidney.

“Now, I’m feeling completely fine,” he said, adding that he must get weekly blood draws as doctors fine-tune the proper level of anti-rejection drugs.

“When you first go into surgery,” Tyler explained, “they give you something – I’m not totally sure what it was – that just really knocks your immune system flat, and that’s to prevent outright rejection because of the trauma of the surgery and the new foreign body and all that stuff. That really lasts for about three months. 

“And during that time, I’m also building up the presence of those other drugs in my system so they can sort of take over that job from that really more intense therapy.”

While Owen took off work for six weeks because he couldn’t lift anything heavier than 10 pounds, he said, “I’m still cautious about what I’m doing.”

“This is surgery. They had to cut through the abdominal muscles and all of that to remove the kidney.”

Neither he nor his son know the identities of the other two patients involved in the transplant swap.

“It would be fun to find out, but I’m not really going to sort of go ahead and pursue that just as of yet,” Owen said.

Tyler said, “I don’t know that I would ever reach out. I think I would let them reach out to me first. We’ll see. If they wanted to contact I’m very grateful that they were able to participate in this.”

One thing they’re both sure of: healthy people should consider signing up as potential kidney donors. 

Owen said, "The program is great...and you're helping somebody who may not be able to get help otherwise."

“It means a tremendous amount to those folks who are able to receive kidneys,” Tyler said. “Kidneys from living donors last a lot longer and have much higher success rates and lower rejection rates than kidneys from deceased donors. 

“So really, for those who are in a position to be able to do it,” he said, “I think it’s a really wonderful way to give to your community.”