At the Davy Crockett restaurant in Morristown, it's not unusual that Jared Gossett's coworkers wear t-shirts with his name on them.
"Because I wanted to let him know that there's people out there that care and want to support him," Jared's mother, Melissa Gossett, said.
Jared Gossett has a tough kidney disease called FSGS. He was diagnosed when he was 16. Since then, it's been really hard.
"I played baseball for high school," Jared said. "And I got tired more easily."
"When we first got diagnosed, we knew that he would have to have a transplant eventually, but we didn't know how long it would be," his mother said.
Melissa Gossett spread the word about her son, and she said almost immediately dozens of people in the Morristown community and beyond contacted her about being potential donors.
"It just really tears you up that people would just want to help," Melissa Gossett said. "I had one mother even say, 'I would want the same for my son. I want to try to donate.'"
The Gossett family waited for months, spending hours on the road to hospitals to see doctors, to get tested and to get blood work done.
"Every day you're just thinking, 'Are we going to get a call that there's going to be someone?'" Melissa Gossett said.
After a year, Jared got a match. It's his father, David.
"It was a great relief," David Gossett said. "I was by myself at work and I just broke down and started crying."
David and Jared, who is now 19, have had to work hard to stay as healthy as possible leading up to the transplant surgery at Emory Hospital in Atlanta on Thursday.
"Not everybody can say that you gave your son life twice," David Gossett said.
UPDATE, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018: David and Jared Gossett are both in recovery and doing well after their transplant surgeries, Melissa Gossett said.
