Brad Bywater sat in a wheelchair at his daughter’s high school May 2023 graduation, unable to stand and hardly able to cheer.
He first felt cold, then a metallic taste in his mouth, nausea in his stomach and an intense lack of physical and mental energy. Around him, parents rose to their feet as names were called. Bywater watched from his wheelchair as his daughter crossed the stage.
Bywater, a husband, father, optometrist and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from San Tan Valley, Arizona, has lived his entire life with polycystic kidney disease — an inherited condition that causes cysts to proliferate throughout the kidneys until they fail.
In January 2023, Bywater’s kidneys slipped into renal failure. By his daughter’s spring graduation, walking to the kitchen left him out of breath.
Bywater knew decline was inevitable with his condition, but he never expected debilitating pain so soon: “I kind of put it in the back of my mind,” he said, adding, “When I finally started feeling bad, that’s when I started worrying about it. That’s when it became a constant worry.”
The most dreaded moments were spontaneous cyst ruptures — a cyst would burst and bleed internally, leaving Bywater in pain for weeks.
In March of that same year, Bywater and his wife, Angela, received a phone call from Brad’s nephrologist. “‘Hey, I need you to come in as soon as possible … we need to talk,’” Brad Bywater recalled being told.
Bywater’s kidney function rate had plummeted below 20, the threshold for avoiding a kidney transplant. That day, the Bywaters spoke with the doctor about being put on the transplant list, one that usually takes five years to rise to the top.
While waiting to be tested and put on the list, Bywater began peritoneal dialysis. It required him to be home by 7:30 p.m. each night to be properly tethered as he slept to a machine filtering toxins through a cavity inside the abdomen.
“It put a damper on date night,” he recalled, chuckling.
Five months later, Bywater was officially listed on Mayo Clinic’s national kidney transplant wait list. The family made a single Facebook post asking people to consider getting tested as potential donors, including a link to sign up at the bottom of the post.
Bywater’s eyes welled with tears as he and his wife saw an overwhelmingly large response.
“I did not realize how loved I was,” he said.
Bywater was stunned to see dozens of people, even acquaintances from high school he hadn’t spoken to in years, messaging him saying they had signed up.
“I tried to make a list of all the people who signed up, and I lost track around 60 people,” he recalled. “I was hoping for maybe five or six people.
“It was very humbling.”
One of his Facebook friends who saw the post was Chris Runkel, the Bywaters’ assigned ministering brother at the time. Even though the two did not know each other deeply, “I kept getting that feeling to get tested,” Runkel said.
“I was like, ‘That’s crazy… I like my organs,” he remembered thinking.
Runkel dismissed the thought, yet told his wife, Candee, about his experience. He told her he felt he should be tested to see if he could be a potential match as a kidney donor for Brad.
Candee Runkel received her own spiritual confirmation, not in a quiet room or in a moment of prayer, but at a stoplight.
She remembered pumping the brakes at a stoplight. In a moment, she felt a wave hit, starting at her head, rushing down to her feet. She just knew, with an undeniable certainty, that her husband was meant to move forward in the transplant process.
“‘Everything is going to be perfectly OK,’” Candee Runkel recalled hearing.
The two decided to go through Mayo Clinic’s testing — a long, rigorous process to ensure the donor’s blood type, health and other factors would be compatible with the recipient.
Going through the tests, Chris Runkel felt he was going to be a match. “I just had this feeling,” he said. “I felt like it was predestined to happen.”
When the news came that he was an acceptable match and that the kidney transfer would soon take place, the Runkels rushed to tell the Bywaters.
On a sunny, Arizona June day, Candee Runkel called Angela Bywater. “I just broke down,” Bywater said. “When she called me, I was just overcome with gratitude. How do you thank someone for that kind of sacrifice?”
In tears, she grabbed the phone to call her husband. Brad Bywater was at work, in between optometry patients, when he received the call. He took a few moments to compose himself before continuing his work, filled with surprise, excitement and overall gratitude.
“I was only on dialysis for four months — most people are on it for years, said Bywater, saying that expressing gratitude — both the times and ways — seemed insufficient.
“That’s the same way I feel about my Savior and what He has done for me,” Bywater said. “That’s why I am so grateful to have gone through this experience, because it’s given me such an appreciation of what He has done for me.
“What Chris has done for me and the gratitude I feel for him has opened my heart more to allow the love of the Savior in even more than I thought was possible.”
On the day of the surgery, the Bywaters nervously checked into the front office. As they began to head to the elevator, a young person played on a public piano the song “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
“I just felt peace,” Brad Bywater recalled.
As they entered the elevator, pushed the button and rose to their destination, the elevator doors opened, and Candee Runkel was standing there ready to greet them.
“As soon as we saw her, I felt the Spirit so strongly,” recalled Brad Bywater.
On that day, Sept. 26, 2023, Runkel did something few ministering brothers do — he gifted the kidney.
Though Chris and Candee Runkel are no longer assigned to minister to Brad and Angela Bywater, a deep friendship remains intact – one built on service and gratitude. The two families continue to minister to each other in new ways.
Reflecting on the experience, Brad Bywater said. “You have no idea how much you can help someone or how much you can change someone’s life. It doesn’t have to be giving a kidney or an organ. It can be just being there for somebody … being willing to sacrifice, being willing to serve.”
