Woman with kidney disease finds donor through Facebook post, shortens long wait for transplant
Stacy Hobson, who was suffering from chronic kidney disease and high blood pressure, had been waiting on a transplant list for 18 months. Instead of starting dialysis, she chose to live her life and travel, a decision she made in May 2025.
She told Action News5, “If I can’t do the things that I love, it’s not living for me.” Despite her physician’s warning that “You’re not going to be here,” she explained that she had “made peace with God.”
A sense of peace overcame her in Greece.
“I just prayed, I asked God, I said, ‘Lord, you know what I want. You know what I want. I pray that my will aligns with yours,’” Hobson recounted.
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Upon returning home to Memphis, Hobson was contacted by staff at the Methodist Transplant Institute with exciting news that they had found a match for her.
“I literally screamed,” Hobson stated.
Hobson felt her prayers had been answered.
“I’ve been praying, and I just felt like it was God that heard my prayer and placed it on her heart,” she said of her surprise donor, Jenny Joyner.
Joyner, an admissions counselor for the University of Mississippi at DeSoto, explained that a friend’s Facebook message inspired her to consider becoming a donor, something she hadn’t considered before, according to WMC.
“Facebook and God, to be honest,” Joyner recalled. “So, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about the opportunity to be a living donor, and she knew someone who needed a kidney. So, for whatever reason that day I was like, ‘Huh! I could do that.’ ”
The life-saving surgery for both the recipient and the donor, Joyner, took place in August 2025. Following the procedure, the recipient sent Joyner a letter, but they did not meet in person until November of that year, after both had recovered. The emotional moment of their first face-to-face encounter was captured on video, showing the two embracing tearfully as their friends and family, also moved to tears, looked on.
READ ALSO: Here’s how a woman’s decision to donate a kidney saved her own life
Joyner’s three children include a son who is a high school senior, a 10-year-old daughter, and a middle child who has Down syndrome. Her family also shares their home with four dogs and a cat.
She emphasized that she was more than happy to help, telling the news station, “If I had three kidneys, I would give another one.”
Joyner and Hobson underwent weeks of compatibility testing. Once the Methodist Transplant Institute staff approved the match, the transplant proceeded smoothly.
Receiving a kidney from a living donor offers significant advantages for patients in need. According to the National Kidney Foundation, this approach can significantly reduce the patient’s wait time for a transplant.
Furthermore, the American Medical Association notes that recipients of a living donor kidney have a very low risk, less than 1%, of experiencing kidney failure after the surgery.
Hobson was deeply moved by Joyner’s life-changing donation. She said, “I just thanked her from the bottom of my heart because I just feel there’s no amount of words that I could say to thank her enough. I’m like, if she don’t know, she’s my new best friend. She got a new sister.”
