By ANA RISANO
Staff Writer
There are only so many ways to ask someone for their kidney. Daniel Kozlovsky III has tried them all. Little did he know, one of the days he would ask, he’d meet a former donor and now friend.
Kozlovsky, 45, is an arborist with decades of tree-climbing experience. He also has end-stage renal disease. His main goal these days is managing kidney failure. He spends at least nine hours each day undergoing at-home dialysis.
A person’s two kidneys, when working normally, act like a filter, removing waste, toxins and extra water from blood. If they aren’t working properly, that waste builds up in the blood and can have deadly consequences.
When Kozlovsky can, he works alongside Danny Carver, of Carver Tree Service, to maintain, remove and care for trees. They have been collaborating for a few years, having done tree work at Pine Needles ahead of the 2022 Women’s Open.
“I love tree work,” Kozlovsky said. “I love trying to save them more so than taking them out, but that’s part of the job too. I love the adventure, the heights, all of that. I’ve just been enthralled with it since I was young.”
This year, he was taking down some trees in Christie Kalles’ yard. When she asked if he needed anything — like a bottle of water — he said, “Yes, a kidney,” and passed her a business card with his story.
“Well, you can’t have my kidney,” Kalles recalled saying. “I already gave mine.”
Kalles donated one of her kidneys to her son, Cary, in 1991. She was a perfect match, and he went on to live another 30 years before passing away from an unrelated cancer.
From that moment, though, Kalles knew she wanted to help Kozlovsky. She recalled her son’s experience with dialysis and living exhausted, day after day. Their meeting, they agreed, might have been kismet.
“Things like that happen for certain reasons and to certain people at the right time,” Kozlovsky said.
Dealing with Dialysis
Kozlovsky found out he had kidney failure in November 2023. He had been experiencing short bouts of sickness for a year before, with vomiting and blinding headaches. But after a day or two, he would be fine. Being stubborn, he never went to the hospital.
“I’ve always been in great health. I climb trees every day,” he said. “I wasn’t a heavy drinker. I was a smoker, but I don’t anymore. I felt good. I looked good. I didn’t think anything was wrong with me.”
When he had a particularly bad spell one Thanksgiving, Kozlovsky’s girlfriend, TJ Chavis, convinced him to get checked out. They met after he rescued her cat, Birdie, from a tree.
They spent six hours in the hospital waiting room. His blood pressure was around 242 over 160. After Kozlovsky was taken to a private room, a doctor came in at 4 a.m. and asked him if he had his affairs in order.
“Because if I did not go on dialysis immediately, I would die,” Kozlovsky said.
He spent seven days in the hospital, on dialysis and getting his blood pressure under control.
He continues that dialysis today. There are two types of dialysis: hemodialysis and peritoneal. Hemodialysis is performed at a center three times a week. There, the patient hooked up to a machine that draws out blood, filters it through an artificial kidney, and pumps it back in.
Kozlovsky started that and switched to peritoneal in February 2024, which he does from home. It takes about nine hours each night, with setup and cleanup. It uses the lining of the abdomen to filter the blood with a solution that enters and leaves through a catheter system.
He has a closet dedicated to medical supplies, including the bags of solution, a machine for the dialysis, IV pole, medical-grade gloves and more. He has to empty what’s filtered about four times a night, with each session about 1.5 hours long.
“It’s exhausting,” Kozlovsky said. “It just drains you.”
He also has doctor appointments most weeks, usually at Duke University Hospital in Durham, which operates a leading kidney transplant center in the state. That’s where he plans to have transplant surgery.
Living Donations
While Kalles cannot donate again, she’s eager to see Kozlovsky receive a kidney and go on to live a healthy life. She remembers her son’s difficult experience managing kidney failure and starting dialysis at 23 years old.
“He only did it a few months and he said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ It’s hard doing dialysis. He had to drive over an hour to go do dialysis.”
Kalles’ son had been born with multiple birth defects, including a third kidney. After several surgeries, he was left with one kidney that had been damaged by infections.
When he asked her to be a donor, she did not hesitate. Within a month, she was tested, prepared for surgery and flown to meet her son in Utah for the transplant.
“What was cool was going into surgery,” Kalles said. “We were taken in side-by-side, mother and son.”
Kalles had no complications from the donation and was able to return to work early. She was in her 50s at the time. Today, she continues to live a healthy life, taking only a small dose of blood pressure medicine.
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), more than 98,500 people in the U.S. are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. In North Carolina alone, there are more than 3,900 waiting.
Kidney donations can be made to strangers, friends or family members. Once in the kidney register, donors and recipients are matched. Kozlovsky said living donors, rather than a cadaver kidney, are a better option. The latter kidney may last 10 to 15 years, but a living donor kidney can last for 25 years.
Kozlovsky and Kalles also emphasized the ease of the process, saying the donor does not have to pay for anything and can receive compensation for lost wages.
“The only thing you give is the organ,” Kozlovsky said. “Oh, and you’re giving someone life.”
To learn more about living donations, visit https://unos.org/transplant/living-donation. To learn more about Kozlovsky’s story, visit www.nkr.org/RJN773. To support Kozlovsky with post-operation housing, visit www.gofundme.com/f/aid-daniels-lifesaving-transplant-quest.
Contact Ana Risano at (910) 585-6396 or ana@thepilot.com.
