BONUS: How Kidney Donation Saved His Life (ft. Richard Franklin)

In this bonus episode I welcome back Richard Franklin to share his miraculous story about how his life was saved through a kidney donation, and being thankful for each day.

LINKS

National Kidney Foundation

PKD Foundation

KDA (Kidney Donor Athletes)

Thank you to Richard for sharing and being part of Girl Dad Nation.

I encourage you to be thankful for each day and help those most in need. If you have an inspiring story to share, please leave a comment on social media or send me an email to girldadnationpodcast@gmail.com

And if you haven't done so yet, hit that Follow button! It means a lot to me!

Thank you for listening!

Until next time, go be a dad!

Look for more episodes in 2025!

Transcript

**Transcript Auto-Generated**

00:00:00:07 - 00:00:18:18
Matthew Krekeler
Welcome to Girl Dad Nation. In this bonus episode, I welcome back Richard Franklin to share his awesome story about being a recipient of a kidney donation.

00:00:22:22 - 00:00:24:10
Matthew Krekeler
Richard, welcome back to the show.

00:00:25:13 - 00:00:26:21
Richard Franklin
Nice to be here again.

00:00:27:19 - 00:01:00:12
Matthew Krekeler
It was awesome chatting with you earlier just about your journey in fatherhood, raising Missy Franklin and yeah, how she was this amazing Olympic athlete and now a mom, philanthropist, advocate and still doing amazing things and now being a granddad to to an amazing granddaughter. But yet, not too long ago, I saw a story just about how you were experiencing kidney failure and looking for a kidney donor.

00:01:01:04 - 00:01:10:16
Matthew Krekeler
So do you mind if we. Yeah, just get some of that story because. Yeah, I'd love to hear from your perspective just everything that happened at that time.

00:01:11:21 - 00:01:53:00
Richard Franklin
Sure, I don't mind at all. I mean, in fact, I get a lot of requests to do this. And and because quite frankly, the story needs to be told. Most Americans are not up to speed on the fact that there's 100,000 people right now waiting for a kidney. You're on dialysis. You know, they go to a machine every other day and they're hooked up for 4 hours, you know.

00:01:53:15 - 00:02:39:00
Richard Franklin
So you take the ride, they're getting hooked up the 4 hours getting unhooked and the ride home. Well, every other day. Every other day. Every other day. I mean, it's keeping them alive. If you call that living and that's. It's just tragic that 100,000 people are waiting for a kidney. At the same time, a very small percentage of kidneys are getting to those people because of for various reasons, systems, medical reasons, transportation, ocean communications, etc., etc., etc..

00:02:39:01 - 00:03:10:03
Richard Franklin
I could go on for hours, but why? It's not working, but it needs to improve. So in my case it was genetic, so I didn't do anything right or wrong. In fact, myself and my brother Doug and my sister Deb all had it. And we all we all ended up getting kidney transplants over the last three years. And in my case, yeah, in my case, I didn't have to do dialysis.

00:03:11:12 - 00:03:37:10
Richard Franklin
My kidneys were failing. But for me, it was at a much later age. I just hung in there longer. My kidneys hung in there longer. My sister did. She had her kidneys replaced at 60. I had mine replaced at 76. So, I mean, I really shouldn't been alive that long with the kidneys. With the kidneys the way they were.

00:03:37:10 - 00:04:02:21
Richard Franklin
So I was very fortunate. But I wasn't, you know, I'm conserving my life and everything I've done. I was pretty, pretty objective about the whole thing. And I wasn't going to go out and I wasn't going to advertise that wasn't going to market. You know, I wasn't going to do anything on social media. And the doctors who kept asking me, do you have a donor or do you have a donor?

00:04:03:13 - 00:04:33:17
Richard Franklin
You know, are you going to get a donor? We'll see. We'll see. In other words, you know, if if there's a cadaver kidney and this is what happened to my brother Doug, there's a cadaver kidney and he or she matches everything that I'm required to have. Then give me a call. You know, and we'll get together and make it happen.

00:04:34:07 - 00:05:01:12
Richard Franklin
And but I wasn't going to go out and actually start. And then one thing led to another and it got more serious and more serious. And the reality was becoming they're just ready to put me on dialysis. And my wife decided to put out an alert on social media on Facebook, just telling people, you know, what was going on.

00:05:02:03 - 00:05:39:07
Richard Franklin
Yeah, we needed their help and that was it. And it blew up. It actually just blew up. And we all started getting that. The hospital started indicating, hey, we're getting people calling in. I think the end numbers were over 35 people. And I think there's like the first note of this. I think we were like 17 rejections before we finally got a match.

00:05:40:08 - 00:06:24:00
Richard Franklin
Yeah. And then when they told us that we had a match and we said, who? They said, Anonymous. Okay, fine. And then about a month before surgery, they said to us, Well, they're willing to come clean. They they want you to know. And lo and behold, it turned out to be Chrissy per him, gold medalist, swimmer, Barcelona. Amazing coincidence, but not so much when you think that the swimming world is a small world.

00:06:24:21 - 00:06:49:12
Richard Franklin
And my wife put out this appeal and it was for Missy. Missy, if it wasn't for me, nobody knows me. It was for Mr. Franklin's dad, right? I mean, is Nick Franklin who the hell is he? Right. But Missy Franklin said, next thing you know, I got I got all these wonderful people and Chrissy was the first one that got it and got accepted.

00:06:49:12 - 00:07:12:11
Richard Franklin
Everything was right, blood type, all those things. And so the very, very first time I met Krissy was when we were put on the gurney, both of us going into the streets, into the operating room. And, you know, it's just it's a wonderful story. And and, you know, Krissy will always be a huge part of my life, actually.

00:07:12:11 - 00:07:51:01
Richard Franklin
She's right here, right down here in this corner, we call it. We call that kidney a little bit. Yeah. So she's she's wonderful and she's like 52 now, but such a selfless act and we're always sending her pictures because, you know, her motivation was it's a small world, swimming worlds connected. And, you know, I love Missy. And, you know, I want Mr. Franklin to live another ten years so he can watch Kate grow up or not.

00:07:51:17 - 00:08:15:04
Richard Franklin
I only grew up at least grew up a little bit. Maybe watch a win race and I want to do this in her. She has two sons and a husband and they all said, we'll support you in a way they went. And my one concern and I'm one still to this day is I don't want anything to happen to Chrissy.

00:08:16:02 - 00:08:50:13
Richard Franklin
You know, I'm in my seventies. She's in her fifties. I said I would never forgive myself if she gave me a kidney and then got sick. You know, five years from now or ten years, you know, prematurely. And I wouldn't be able to live with myself. And they the doctors, you know, it's sociologist, psychologists and doctors all. Listen, we don't approve we don't approve these things unless we know two things.

00:08:50:21 - 00:09:25:00
Richard Franklin
Number one, it's the right thing for the recipient. Number one, it's the right thing for the donor. And there's zero risks. And to this to this day, I mean, I've become a firm believer in that. In fact, in Colorado just two years ago, there were like, I want to say 28 or 30 Coloradans, kidney donors, all with their pictures taken together at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

00:09:26:15 - 00:10:01:04
Richard Franklin
And the message was to people generally that, look at us, we gave a kidney and we're healthy. And guess what? We just kept Kilimanjaro is us, right? I mean, and so Chrissy, is she just she just it is a swim thing for kidney disease down in Key Largo in the Florida Keys. She's a runner. She's a tracker. She's just robust, as you can imagine.

00:10:01:04 - 00:10:34:12
Richard Franklin
And she hasn't that two days after surgery, she was out of the hospital and driving back to Albuquerque. And she's never looked back. She's healthy. We've seen her a number of times since then. I was in Denver just to three weeks ago on September 29th, and we were in the DaVita building. And the the National Transplant Foundation was holding a fundraiser and they honored Chrissy that evening.

00:10:34:12 - 00:10:56:06
Richard Franklin
And Channel Nine was there. Kim. Kim from Channel Nine was there and and they asked me to fly in and speak to. It was a it was a wonderful event. So, so far so good. It's all working out. And I'm still around to see tomorrow, sunshine and go over and visit Kate. So I'm I'm forever, forever grateful.

00:10:57:13 - 00:11:17:04
Matthew Krekeler
That's great to hear. And such an amazing story, too. And just all the things that kind of have to happen. Like you said, it's not only do you have to have a willing donor, but then it's got to be a match. And then the fact that she's this solid Olympic swimmer to you, it's just an amazing thing that all just kind of came into place.

00:11:17:14 - 00:11:38:02
Matthew Krekeler
But as you were telling that story, it seemed like you were kind of out of place like you kind of found out the news in your 70 years. And it seems like you're kind of in a place where you're sort of like content with just whatever happened, like you said, not actively looking for a donor.

00:11:38:13 - 00:12:04:11
Richard Franklin
Yeah. I mean, I mean, maybe maybe my brother had something to do with that too, because. Because he lives in Florida and he had he had two attempts. The first attempt didn't work. Something was wrong with the kidney. He got up at 4:00 in the morning. He got a urgent phone call and got in the car and rushed to the hospital.

00:12:05:06 - 00:12:24:17
Richard Franklin
Because you only have so much life span in a kidney when it's after the body is gone, right after the person has died. I think it's only 24 hours. So you've got to get you've got to have the match. You got to have all that figured out and then be able to get the two of them together. That's one of the issues with cadavers, right?

00:12:25:15 - 00:12:48:10
Richard Franklin
So he went through that. And I don't know whether that really influenced me as much as, you know what, I've lived a life of five guys and I don't want to hurt anybody else on the way out, period. And then my wife took over and Missy took over. And what can I do but sit back and enjoy the ride?

00:12:49:20 - 00:13:10:03
Matthew Krekeler
Well, yeah, it's an amazing thing that just like the women in your life care for you so much. And it's great to just to see now with the donor, like just you being able to enjoy your retirement and time with your granddaughter and yeah, just hope that there's so many more things that you'll still be able to enjoy.

00:13:10:04 - 00:13:12:17
Richard Franklin
I'm hoping so. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

00:13:13:18 - 00:13:29:09
Matthew Krekeler
Richard, thank you so much. I really appreciate this time. Do you know, just for people wanting to learn more about like the opportunity to donate a kidney or more about kidney research and all that kind of stuff, where would you send people?

00:13:30:15 - 00:14:02:00
Richard Franklin
Oh, there's there's so many. You know, just Google. But there's the National Kidney Foundation. There's the National Transplant Foundation, National Kidney Society. I mean, anyone there's the PKD which is the disease we had is called polycystic kidney disease, the PKD. Society. I mean, Google will give you a list of multiple, but you know, national kidney Kidney Foundation is a good place to start.

00:14:02:04 - 00:14:29:06
Matthew Krekeler
Awesome. Thank you. And I'll link to those in the description for people to check out. And thank you so much for all of my listeners. Please like and subscribe. We've review on Apple Podcasts for Girl Dad Nation and until next time go be a dad.