A family in Georgia says it is hoping social media can help locate a kidney for the ailing father, a veteran police officer whose kidney function is down to 10 percent.
Raleigh Callaway, 49, an investigator with the Greensboro Police department, has been in a 15-year fight with diabetes and hypertension and needs a kidney transplant, the family says.
They turned to an area photographer, Brandy Angel, who often donates her photographic services to organizations such as the Make-A-Wish foundation.
"I was so moved to help in any way," Angel says, so she offered to provide a photo shoot for the family for free, featuring Callaway, his wife Kristi, and two daughters Delaine and Braleigh holding a sign saying "Our Daddy needs a Kidney."
The photos were posted on a website and a Facebook page, where they quickly attracted likes and shares.
After a local television station carried the story on the Callaways and Raleigh Callaway's plight, more than 300 people -- all strangers to the family -- contacted Emory University Hospital, which is supervising Callaway's treatment, offering to be tested as a potential donor match.
"Raleigh has always been so private with his health conditions, and when he asked me to share his need on Facebook after his evaluation at Emory, I knew we needed to do it in a special way," Kristi Callaway says of her decision to contact Angel.
Raleigh Callaway has recently been as being in Stage 5 kidney failure.
"It's the end stage," Kristi Callaway says. "We're in desperate need for a match."
"It only takes one donor, but it takes a lot of people to be tested to find that match," she says.
The poor function of Callaway's kidneys have made him anemic, requiring weekly drug treatments in an effort to stimulate red blood cell production, his doctors say.
At Emory University Hospital, the Callaway's have met with a transplant coordinator, nutritionist, and financial coordinator in an evaluation procedure.
Tests and scans will be completed by Aug. 5 at which point Callaway will be officially placed on the transplant list, hospital officials said.
In the meantime, he is expected to begin daily dialysis sometime within the next month while he awaits a potential donor.
Any costs of the prescreening process for prospective donors would be covered with funding arranged by Emory and "the costs to the potential donor will be zero," Kristi Callaway says.
