Redefining ‘a friend in need’

Jennifer Knight

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2004 | 11:24 a.m.

Tommy Cash's friend of 35 years, Michael Clark, gave him the one thing no one else could this week -- his kidney.

"I said, 'You're sure you want to do this?"' Cash, 58, said Wednesday at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center after Tuesday's transplant. "He said he's tired of me coming into work sick."

Clark, 53, was more matter-of-fact about the five-hour operation.

"He needed a kidney," Clark said as he sat next to his friend. "Besides, he always said he'd dance on my grave."

Until Clark was 6, the two lived blocks apart near Jones and Charleston boulevards, but they never met until they were in their 20s when Cash was hired to manage a fish and chips restaurant co-owned by Clark. Cash said he finally met Clark after he was sent to pick him up from McCarran International Airport after a visit with out-of-town family.

The two talked about where they grew up, discovered they had been neighbors and forged what Cash now calls a "gold-bonded friendship."

"Ever since then we were drinking buddies," Clark said. "We worked together. He even got a couple of girlfriends from me."

Cash asked, "Which one did I get from you?"

Clark's nagging brought them to this place.

Clark, who is also Cash's boss at MYS Drywall & Acoustics, dogged him for months to go to the doctor after noticing he appeared ill. When Cash finally went about two years ago, he discovered he had pneumonia and fluid in his heart. He also found out that his high blood pressure had caused his kidneys to fail.

Month after month Clark watched as Cash underwent painful dialysis. While Cash's energy waned, there was still no luck in finding a donor.

After nearly two years Cash was one of 135 people in Las Vegas put on a waiting list for a kidney and he didn't seem to be moving up the list.

Cash's doctor said Cash was lucky that Clark stepped forward.

"There are people dying waiting for organs every day," Dr. Scott Slavis, the urologist who performed the transplant, said. "If there was more public awareness and people didn't have some of the hang-ups they have about donating organs, this problem could be erased."

Slavis said kidney transplant patients not only endure the pain of dialysis but their energy and the freedom to travel is robbed from them.

"Quality of life is awful," he said. Slavis said Cash now has a 90 percent chance of a full recovery, although he will be on medication for the rest of his life.

Before the operation Clark said he had "second and third doubts" about donating his kidney, but he wouldn't change his decision.

The doctors have told him that he will have some pain for a few weeks, he said, but "it's fine. I could get up and dance right now. And with a friend, you work to help them out."

Clark was released from the hospital Wednesday but Cash will remain for several more days. After that, he says he will start to jog again and, if Clark will take him, he'll go back to work.

"I'll go just as soon as I can," Cash said. "He won't let me work sick. I know him better than that."