KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Thom Hobbs says he spend two years on the kidney transplant list and three years in kidney failure.
"It's a lifetime commitment if you don't get a kidney," he said. "It's no way to live your life."
But then he met his wife Debbie, and from then on losing his life to kidney failure was no longer an option.
"We really wanted a life together," Hobbs said. "We started promoting back then trying to get a donor."
Thanks to a good Samaritan, the couple put up a billboard looking for help from someone willing to donate -- and eventually a notification popped up on Debbie's phone.
"She gets a Facebook message: Do you still need a kidney?"
That message came from Howie Day, who was looking to be a donor.
"I contacted Debbie and asked if her husband still needed a kidney, and she responded right away and said yes," Day said.
Turns out the two were a match and now, one week post surgery, both men are doing fine and are, as Hobbs would say, connected at the hip.
"Now I say he's my blood brother," Hobbs said.
Both men said the healing process is going well, but for Hobbs this kidney means a shot at the kind of life he hasn't seen in years. It is a chapter he plans to fill with all of things he's missed out on doing.
"I want to hike, I want to get back to my photography," he said.
As for Day, he just wants people to know how life-changing living donors can be.
"It's just the right thing to do, there should not be people out there dying on dialysis with healthy people in the world capable of donating a kidney to them," Day said.
He said gaining a new pal wasn't a bad bargain either.
"We're good friends, it was a win, win," he said.
Hobbs said it'll take him a few months to get back on his feet, but it's a price he's willing to pay for a new beginning with his wife and a lifetime with a new lifelong friend.
"I feel better, I know I'm gonna feel better," he said. "Good things are going to happen, this is a real blessing."