Betty Vetuskey didn’t think twice.
She was 52 when doctors told her that dialysis wasn’t working for her 16-year-old son, Ray, and that the only way forward was a transplant. She raised her hand before they had finished explaining. It was March 1978, in Rochester, New York.
On the day of the surgery, they were laid on adjoining gurneys, holding hands. Betty was crying. Ray, with the calm of a teenager who thinks only about music, told her not to worry because he had a Genesis concert to go to and wasn’t going to miss it. Three weeks later, he was in the front row. He still has the tickets.
A donated kidney usually lasts between 15 and 20 years. Ray’s has just turned 100, counting his mother’s age, and is still working without a hitch in a 64-year-old man—the longest-surviving transplant patient at Strong Memorial Hospital. He goes back for a checkup once a year, and doctors hope it will last him his whole life.
Betty died in 2008. She would have turned 100 in June. Ray honored her by registering a star in her name, so she would remain in the heavens for eternity. “I think about her every day”, he says. “She’s always by my side”.