Clifton Booth had long considered becoming a living kidney donor, but he wasn’t sure it was the right course of action for him. Then, in fall 2017, he encountered an acquaintance who had been a donor and encouraged Booth to consider it.

People who have received transplants understand that organ transplantation offers a second chance at life. UAB Medicine patients Lucy Emonina and her daughter, Ovuke’ McCoy, share that understanding in a deeper way. They both were born with a serious heart condition and later received heart transplants. Since then, mother and daughter have enjoyed active lives, sharing their stories in various ways and serving as ambassadors for heart health and organ donation awareness.

Tabitha Derryberry, 49, is no stranger to chronic medical conditions. She has lupus, an inflammatory disease in which the immune system attacks joints, organs, and the skin. And when she was 35, Derryberry learned that her kidneys were failing due to having Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the body’s cells.

Damion Jones, 31, was at work when he felt the pain in his stomach. He knew that something wasn’t right, but neither he nor his employer’s onsite clinic could pinpoint what was wrong. Next came shortness of breath. “I couldn’t walk up the hill at work without getting winded,” Jones said. “And I couldn’t get rid of my cough.” So began the odyssey that eventually brought Jones to UAB’s Comprehensive Transplant Institute (CTI).

DeAnthonis Kelly’s world started to unravel when he came down with pneumonia in 2019 and got worse when he caught COVID-19 in 2020. Even after he recovered, Kelly found himself out of breath when he walked from the parking lot to his workstation at a steel plant.

Through a series of events and promotions each April, Legacy of Hope recognizes National Donate Life Month (NDLM). The observation was established by Donate Life America to raise awareness about organ donation and share the perspectives of individuals and families touched by donation and transplantation.

Alan Mayes, RN, a post-kidney transplant coordinator with the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute, retired in January 2024. During his long career, Mayes played a role in advances at UAB Medicine generally and in transplant medicine specifically. His supervisors and colleagues say he’ll be hard to replace.

Mary Beth Helms Templin had a lifetime of challenges with her lungs, starting with being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at just three months old. Those challenges paled in comparison to Templin’s experience as a young adult, which ultimately led her to the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute to receive a double lung transplant.

Frank Reeves says he has two birthdays. The first was the day he was born 62 years ago, and the second was May 12, 1998 – the day he received his kidney transplant. Reeves’ difficult path to that second birthday began when he was 35 and serving as a police officer in Dothan, Ala.

“I know more about lungs than I ever wanted to,” said Wanda Tunnell, 65. The Tuscaloosa, Ala., resident’s double lung transplant in May 2021 was the culmination of a long journey of unanswered questions and terrifying episodes of breathing trouble.

In August of 1995, the Miley family found themselves in a hospital room celebrating the arrival of their newest addition, a baby girl named Brooke. A year later, the family was back in the hospital for a different reason. Brooke had restrictive cardiomyopathy, a life-threatening condition that the hospital could not treat.

Currently used Food and Drug Administration-approved transplant drugs — with the addition of an also already FDA-approved complement inhibitor — are the optimal immunosuppression regimen for pig-to-human kidney transplants, according to a landmark discovery by University of Alabama at Birmingham investigators. The peer-reviewed research is published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.