A young woman in Elk Creek, Virginia, asked for help in a unique way after her boyfriend was diagnosed with kidney disease in 2017.
When Robert Fallon’s doctors told him he was sick, he and his girlfriend, Krystal Sparks, were devastated, according to WINK.
“It’s one of the most aggressive forms of kidney disease a person can get,” Fallon said.
Sadly, the wait for a donor to appear put a huge strain on the young couple.
“Is today gonna be the day? Is today gonna be the day? Every day for almost a thousand days,” Fallon recalled.
However, on one of those days, his girlfriend decided to use her artistic talents to speed up the process in the only way she knew how.
“So I started painting rocks and at first, it was just us that was spreading them and we would spread them on the way to Roanoke and on the way to Charlottesville for his appointments,” Sparks commented.
The rocks were painted with Fallon’s blood type and a message that read “My Boyfriend Needs a Kidney – amatchforRobert@gmail.com Be a Donor or Relocate ‘A-,'” surrounded by tiny hearts.
Sparks’ family and friends helped spread the rocks all the way from Virginia to Cape Coral, Florida, where resident Lisa Brandt saw them and decided to help.
Brandt painted more rocks and sent them to Colorado and Indiana. She even sent some to Germany with her mother-in-law.
“I spread some myself in Italy just this last September just to get the word out there,” she recalled.
Kidneys donated from either a living or deceased donor can work well, but getting one from a living donor works faster and is better for both patients, according to the National Kidney Foundation’s website.
Thankfully, after their two-year search, the couple found a donor and Fallon underwent the transplant surgery.
“It gives you hope that there’s still good people in the world,” he said, adding that he and Sparks, who is now his fiancé, were thankful for everyone’s help during the process.
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