Stranger who saw Cedar Hill man's social media plea donates life‑saving kidney

A Cedar Hill man's desperate plea for a kidney didn't just travel across social media – it reached the one person who could save his life: a complete stranger in Houston who turned out to be his perfect match.

Ishmael Thorns was on dialysis and facing kidney failure after a rare tumor on his adrenal gland caused years of undetected high blood pressure. His situation was complicated further by his uncommon blood type, B+, which carries one of the nation's longest waits for a transplant.

So he turned to social media with an appeal – asking for a gift he could never repay.

"I can't do nothing for you," he posted. "But you can be part of my family if you give me a kidney. You give me a kidney, you can come to Christmas, you can come to Thanksgiving. We can lock in. You feel me?"

Many people responded. But one of them would change his life.

"One of my posts advocating for myself for a living donor went semi-viral, and Brandy was gracious and kind enough to reach out to me, and we went from there," Thorns said Friday during a news conference.

After several months of testing, Thorns received a kidney on July 7 from Brandy Laman, a complete stranger who happened to be one of the 27,000 people on TikTok who saw his appeal.

On Friday, the two sat down with the surgeons who performed the transplant at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, including Dr. Christie Gooden.

"She donated her kidney to Ishmael so he could have a working kidney," Gooden said. "What's beautiful about this is that they didn't know each other until they met on social media."

She added, "This is one of the reasons I went into transplant. Because of stories like this. Because there's so much more that we have in common than we don't."

For Laman, the decision was personal. Her husband had been diagnosed with leukemia several years ago and received a bone marrow transplant from a man in Germany. She said she wanted to pay that generosity forward.

"I absolutely was not looking to give someone a kidney, but I do follow – especially with my husband's medical issues – I do follow a lot of people just to be encouraging … and he just popped up on my page.

"I was just honored to do it. I was just honored that we got this opportunity that I came across him. It's been just as much of a blessing to me to be able to do this," she said.

Thorns said he feels reborn and hopes others will consider becoming living donors.

"Just consider being a living donor. On my social media, I asked the question to my fellow kidney warriors: Would you rather have a million dollars or a new kidney? So, a gift like this is really priceless. It's really life-changing," he said.

The story is a testament to the good that can be found on social media – and to the human spirit's instinct to help one another.