Austin woman receives kidney donation from her best friend

AUSTIN, Texas - When you think of your best friend, you think of the person who's made you laugh and made you cry.

"When we met, we just clicked, you know. I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but you meet somebody you like. Oh, yeah. We could be friends," says Andrei Thomas, a kidney recipient.

For the past 33 years, Andrei and Rhonda have been inseparable from small moments to hard times.

In 2022, Andrei heard devastating news.

 "I knew that I had 50% usage of my kidney. And so, I was just like, I wasn't concerned about it until they told me the numbers. And it was like a single digit," says Thomas.

To Andrei's and her doctors' disbelief, her kidney was failing.

"So we immediately just started thinking, what are we going to do? Because it was obvious that I needed a new kidney," says Thomas.

When Rhonda found out her best friend needed a new kidney, she started doing her own research to find out what Andrei's options were.

"My first thought was, you know, what are the chances that we are a match? What do you have to do to find out if you are a kidney match? So, me and good old Google, I started the thing. Step number one is blood type," says Rhonda Johnson, kidney donor.

After taking the blood test, Rhonda found out they were a match. She knew at that moment she wanted to help her best friend and donate her kidney.

Rhonda traveled to Austin to tell Andrei the good news in person.

"I said, so now what did they tell you? How much downtime are you going to have when they do the kidney transplant? And I said, is it harder on the recipient or the donor? I've heard that it's harder on the donor. And I said, really? Because they told me that it really wasn't too bad on the donor, and I said, because they told me you'd be down way longer than I would be," says Johnson as she remembers the conversation she had with Thomas.

Andrei was in shock. For the past 10 months she was doing in-home dialysis waiting for a donor, just to find out her best friend is her match.

"I don't think I thought that the first person that got tested would be a match. It just wasn't anywhere in my brain that we were going to be a match," says Thomas.

Nearly a year since the kidney transplant, both Andrei and Rhonda are recovering, and they plan to celebrate the anniversary of the life-saving surgery.

"I couldn't have gotten through this without her and my family and Rhonda just cheering me on and telling me, you know, you can do this, and you'll find out that you're stronger than you think you are," says Thomas.

For those who are looking at how they can become a kidney donor, click here.