Memphis Mom of Three Jenny Joyner Saw a Facebook Post and Gave a Kidney to Stacy Hobson, Who Faced a 5- to 7-Year Wait

A wait of 5 to 7 years was what doctors gave Stacy Hobson for a kidney from a deceased donor, after she had already spent 18 months on the transplant list. Then Jenny Joyner, a Memphis mother of three, saw a friend’s Facebook post about living kidney donation and began testing to give a kidney to someone she had never met. Her kidney went to Hobson, according to a report published by Upworthy.

Joyner said her husband set a drink down at dinner in a plastic cup bearing a transplant organization’s logo, which she had not noticed before, and the detail stayed with her as she thought about donating.

A friend’s post that started the testing

Joyner learned about living kidney donation from a Facebook post by a friend who knew someone in need of a kidney, Action News 5 in Memphis reported. Asked what led her to donate, Joyner credited “Facebook and God, to be honest.”

In May 2025, she began compatibility testing at the Methodist Transplant Institute, and it took weeks to finish. Joyner, who turned 45 that year, is an admissions counselor for the University of Mississippi’s DeSoto campus, a wife and a mother of three, and Upworthy describes the children as a high school senior, a middle child with Down syndrome and a 10-year-old.

The recipient was someone she had never met. Privacy rules kept the two women from learning each other’s names while the process unfolded.

Eighteen months on the list and a choice about dialysis

Stacy Hobson, also of Memphis, has chronic kidney disease and high blood pressure. After 18 months on the waiting list, doctors estimated that a deceased-donor kidney could take 5 to 7 years and advised starting dialysis, Upworthy reported.

Hobson declined, against her doctors’ wishes, because she wanted to keep traveling. As she put it, if she could not do the things she loves, it was not living for her. In May 2025, while she was in Greece, she said she felt at peace with whatever happened.

Her wait is not unusual. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases says waits for deceased-donor kidneys can range from a few months to years, that most transplant centers give priority to people who have waited longest, and that people may need dialysis while they wait. A living donor, by contrast, means no waiting list for the patient, the surgery can be scheduled ahead, and the kidney may be in better condition than one from a deceased donor, the institute says. Rejection is also less common with living donors, it adds, and a relative is more likely to be a good tissue match.

The call that came after Greece

Shortly after Hobson returned home, the transplant team phoned to say she had a match, according to Action News 5. She told the station that she screamed when she heard it.

The surgery took place in August 2025 at Methodist, where the Living Donor Kidney Transplant Program is led by Dr. Vasanthi Balaraman. Action News 5 reported that Methodist performed a record 263 kidney transplants in 2024.

Joyner donated one of her kidneys that month. Action News 5 did not give an exact surgery date.

A letter of thanks and a first meeting

Because the two could not exchange names, Hobson wrote a letter of thanks that went through the hospital. Joyner read it while recovering at home, Upworthy reported.

In early November 2025, the women met for the first time. Both were fully recovered. Joyner said she would do it again. Hobson, who had refused dialysis to keep traveling, no longer faces the 5- to 7-year wait her doctors had predicted.

The fuller story reached readers again in April 2026, when local stations, working with InvestigateTV, ran their own version. That report added the scale of the need. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. national transplant waiting list, and about 85% of them need a kidney, and it cited 13 deaths a day among people waiting. It also reported experts saying living-donor kidneys can shorten wait times and often lead to better outcomes than deceased-donor organs, though donors can face barriers such as unreimbursed out-of-pocket costs.

What it takes to give a kidney to a stranger

The National Kidney Foundation describes living donation as giving an organ to someone while the donor is alive, and lists “directed” and “non-directed” donors among the types. Joyner fell into the second kind, giving to someone she had not met. The foundation notes that some employers offer salary support to living donors, and its page links to an online eligibility screening and to information on living donor finances and insurance.

The NIDDK adds that living donors must have a health exam to confirm they are healthy enough to donate, and that donors usually stay in the hospital for several days, though a newer technique using a smaller cut may allow them to leave in two to three days.

The Methodist Transplant Institute, based on Union Avenue in Memphis, lists living organ transplantation among its services and takes questions from prospective donors by phone.

Hobson, for her part, has turned the experience into outreach. She wrote a book, Yield, Heal & Thrive, and started the Yield Heal Thrive Foundation to help transplant patients, according to Action News 5. Both women, in other words, have turned a long wait and a stranger’s decision into something other families can learn from.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Quintin Soloviev – CC BY 4.0/Wikimedia Commons