PADUCAH, Ky. (AP)—Despite hushed whispers, the tapping of nervous feet, the clicking of iPhone cameras, all was silent for West Kentucky Community & Technical College’s men’s basketball coach Michael Chumbler on Feb. 27 as he stood to meet two complete strangers in the campus gymnasium.
The three men were already connected, however, by one common factor, the life of 20-year-old Kam Chumbler, Michael’s son who passed away last May. Michael was meeting for the first time the men who are living because of his son’s organ donations.
“I can feel Kam here,” Michael Chumbler said, looking toward Paul Mattingly, the recipient of Kam’s lungs. “When I stood to hug him, his lungs were breathing, in and out. I could feel them.”
A few weeks ago, Chumbler mailed personally written letters to each transplant recipient, asking them to attend a basketball game being played in Kam’s honor so he could see the lives his son saved.
“I couldn’t not come. It has all come full circle,” Mattingly said. “We lost our son, an organ donor, in 2008, so on the way down to the hospital to get the transplant I knew what someone was going through. It just eats your heart when you lose someone. So for Kam’s sake, I block that out and grab life a lot harder.”
Mattingly, from Louisville, had suffered from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a sort of cancer on the lungs, for over three years. When he received a double-lung transplant, he knew it was a gift, a second chance, from a stranger.
“That weighed heavy on me, knowing that someone else’s lungs were in me to help me keep going. I had to come meet Michael today, knowing that I received Kam’s lungs,” he said, looking toward Michael.
“Thank you, from the bottom of my lungs.”
Mattingly’s wife, Julie, said she is thankful for Kam’s brave decision to become a donor. Because of that choice, her husband has a renewed life.
“There are so many emotions following a transplant, and he’s been feeling depressed the past few months, but as soon as that letter came with videos of Kam, it has given him new motivation,” she said.
“I just wish I could thank him for making that one simple choice.”
Kam’s donations saved the life of another Louisville resident, Ed Ice, who received a liver transplant after combatting ulcerative colitis for over 40 years. Because of the transplant, he was able to live to see the birth of his grandson in July.
“For me, it is surreal,” Ice said. “It was tough for me to make a decision to have a transplant. I thought that these were the parts I came in with, and these were the parts I needed to come out with, but finally I decided to do it. It still messes with your head a bit because the only reason I’m here is because of Michael’s son.”
For Chumbler, meeting with the recipients of his son’s donation was a vital step toward healing.
“I wasn’t ready to meet them before,” he said. “I needed some time, but I’m grateful to them for coming. It never stops hurting, but this will help heal. Nothing will ever make the pain completely better, but this is a step in the right direction, for sure.”
For Mattingly and Ice, being the recipient of an organ donation makes them mindful and thankful each day.
“It really affects you when you think that, for us to live, somebody else died,” Ice said. “So every morning when I get up, I thank God, and I thank Kam.”
Information from: The Paducah Sun, https://www.paducahsun.com
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