From Kidney Transplant to the Transplant Games: Rey’s Story

Rey Mendoza has a “deep appreciation for life” after nearly losing his to kidney disease about five years ago. He says his most important job now is taking good care of his body, which he proves he is doing as a competitive athlete in the Transplant Games.

When he was just 21 years old, Rey, who is now 36 and lives in Miami, was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (damage to the kidneys that stops them from working as well as they should) and learned that he had only 50 percent kidney function. He was put on a drug regimen and monitored by a specialist. He said he really didn’t have any symptoms until around his 30th birthday, when he began to feel very tired and started getting occasional cramps.

He was very busy working and going to college and didn’t think much of it, he says, until one day when he was driving home from school.

“I had this horrible cramp in my abdomen,” Rey says. “I couldn’t sit up and I was driving in traffic.”

He eventually managed to pull over and call 9-1-1 and was taken by ambulance to a nearby emergency room. Tests run on him there showed that he was in renal failure (a condition in which one or both kidneys no longer works on its own).

“I could very easily have died at that point,” Rey says.

He had only 3 percent renal function and had to be put on dialysis (a treatment that performs the normal duties of the kidneys by filtering waste and excess fluid from the blood). He underwent an emergency procedure in which a catheter was implanted in his chest for dialysis treatments, which he would have to undergo three times a week. This, Rey says, was tough for him to process.

“I tried to take it all in stride and accept that this is what I had to do for right now,” he says.

Once dependent on dialysis. Now crossing finish lines. These medals stand for resilience, recovery, and gratitude. Photos courtesy: Rey Mendoza.

About four months later he was able to switch to peritoneal dialysis (a type of dialysis that uses the lining of the abdomen as a natural filter to remove waste, toxins and extra fluid from the body) and do the treatments at home.

He continued with home dialysis for two years. During that time, however, Rey lost a lot of weight because the dialysis treatments were required 13 hours a day every day and he was working full-time at a physically demanding job as a production lead for a pharmaceutical manufacturing company.

“I was getting pretty burned out and I didn’t know how much more I could push forward,” Rey says.

At that point he was offered the opportunity to go on the transplant list. Rey chose Cleveland Clinic in Florida for his transplant because of its reputation and location, he says.

He had the choice to wait for an organ to become available or to find someone able to donate. He chose the latter. Though several of Rey’s family members stepped up to see if they were a match, it was his younger brother, Christopher, who was in the Air Force and overseas, who was deemed compatible.

Taking it all in. A moment made possible by transplant. Photo courtesy: Rey Mendoza.

In December 2021, Rey received Christopher’s donated kidney at Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital under the care of Neerja Agrawal, MD, transplant nephrologist and medical director of the Kidney Transplant Department, and Antonio Pinna, MD, transplant surgeon and surgical director of the Abdominal Transplant Department.

“I woke up the next day and immediately I felt different,” Rey says. His brother’s kidney worked well right away, he says, and after about six months of recovery, he was “thriving” with no dialysis needed.

Transplant coordinator, Maritery Batista-Dudek, APRN, manages all of Rey’s post-transplant care.

“She’s amazing,” Rey says. “She regularly follows up with me and is really relatable. She understands what I’m dealing with.”

Transplant is not the end of the story. For Rey, it was the beginning. Photos courtesy: Rey Mendoza.

In 2024 Rey learned about the Transplant Games of America, a national event held every two years that celebrates organ, eye and tissue donations through friendly competition and events. Thousands of transplant recipients, living donors, donor families, caregivers, and supporters from across the country participate in the games.

The company Rey works for, BioTissue, sponsored him for the 2024 games in Birmingham, Ala. Though he had only a few months to train, Rey won a first-place gold medal in his category for the 5k race, and bronze medals for the 5k and 25k bike rides.

“It was just really special,” he says. “I remember at one point in my life I didn’t even think I would make it. And then three years later I competed in the Transplant Games and won.”

He plans to participate in the Transplant Games again this year in Denver, running and biking again.

He is grateful to his brother for donating his kidney, and to Cleveland Clinic for the “amazing care” he received there.

“The staff there is world class. Everybody treated me with empathy and care,” he says.