Pharmacist Donates Kidney to Customer After Falling in Love

Shield, a professor of surgery at the University of Kansas School of Medicine at Wichita, and the hospital's director of transplantation and operating room director, said the hospital will do 40 kidney transplants this year, up from 30 in 2007.

Justin Lister and Julie Wallace are both doing well after surgery and Lister has been able to work for the first time in months.

(Courtesy Justin Lister)

Four days after surgery, Lister and Wallace were well enough to go home, where they were aided by their parents, friends and Wallace's pharmacy co-workers.

Lister already is back at work as a groundskeeper for the McPherson Recreation Commission. Wallace was out of action for eight weeks. Between her medical leave and some saved up vacation, she's not due back to the pharmacy until after the first of the year.

"We're feeling excellent," Wallace said. "Justin is so much better off."

The greenish-grey tinge his skin had before the surgery has given way to a healthy pink glow, she said.

Shield said Lister's greatest risk of complications come from the possibility that his body may one day reject Wallace's kidney. He now takes more than a dozen medications daily, a number that will dwindle to about six in a few months once he's considered stable.

"Otherwise, they're like normal people after a fairly short amount of time," he said.

While the couple is preparing for "the greatest Christmas ever" -- they already put up lights -- Lister said they will also make a holiday out of Oct. 21.

"That's his new birth date," Wallace said.