Salas has had kidney problems since he was an baby. He has been in and out of hospitals for almost 30 years and has spent the last three years on dialysis. More than three years ago, a battle with testicular cancer briefly bumped him off the donation list, but Salas gained a new lease on life when the call finally came.
“Are you sure? Are you serious?” Salas said when he heard from an Intermountain Medical Center transplant coordinator about the available kidney from a live donor.
“I’m helping someone who needs help and to me this is really no different that helping a neighbor who needs help unloading the groceries," Thompson said.