Kidney transplant kept Indiana ballplayer in the game

When the Charlotte Knights take the field against the Indianapolis Indians this weekend, Lori Lord will attend all three games. After all, her kidney will be sitting in the visiting team’s dugout, safely lodged inside the abdomen of Charlotte Knights player Ethan Wilson.

Four years ago, Wilson, a promising baseball prospect from Pendleton, learned he had a disease that had left his kidneys scarred and barely functioning — the same ailment that sidelined former NBA star Alonzo Mourning.

Wilson spent two years on the list waiting for a kidney transplant from a deceased donor, before Lord, his mother’s best friend, learned that one of her two kidneys proved a perfect match. Once Lord heard that, she knew what she had to do.

“When it came back a match, there wasn’t anything to think about,” she said.

In so doing, Lord gave Wilson, 26, the chance to fulfill his lifelong goal of playing professional baseball. Dialysis would have saved his life but destroyed that dream, said Dr. Dennis Mishler, a transplant nephrologist at IU Health University Hospital involved with his care.

“The transplant gave him the opportunity to chase his dream. Without a transplant, he wouldn’t have been able to do that,” Mishler said.

In August 2013, doctors at IU Health University Hospital removed one of the kidneys from Lord’s body and placed it in Wilson’s. It took Wilson almost 18 months to recuperate fully, but this spring, he was back in Arizona at spring training.

After playing for about a month in extended spring training, Wilson was offered a spot on the Chicago White Sox’s farm team in Winston-Salem. A few weeks ago, he got called up to the White Sox’s Triple-A affiliate, the Knights, just in time to make the trip to his home state.

Rather than focusing on the negatives of his past ordeal, Wilson, 26, chooses to see the upside.

“Even when I was going through it, I remained positive and gained a really good perspective on things that I translated into baseball: You can’t control what you can’t control and you never will be able to,” he said. “So many things, I realize now, I used to worry about that I don’t.”

Growing up in Pendleton, Wilson started playing baseball in elementary school. By the time he arrived at Pendleton Heights High School, he was such a proficient player that he became one of the first freshmen to make the Arabians’ varsity roster.

College recruiters started swarming him during his sophomore year and he signed with Indiana University. Wilson played in the 2008 and 2010 season, sitting out the 2009 season with an ankle injury. With each season, his desire to play professional baseball increased.

“The more that I played, the more that I realized that those dreams could start coming true,” he said.

While he was at IU, Wilson had a bug of some sort and went to be tested for swine flu. That test came back negative, but the blood work showed Wilson’s kidney function was slightly decreased. He started taking medicine but stopped with a doctor’s approval after the drugs depleted his energy and left him depressed.

After his junior year of college, Wilson was drafted by the White Sox. He played a short season for the Bristol (Tenn.) White Sox, a rookie league team.

“Other than struggles on the baseball field with my numbers and stats, I felt great,” he said.

The next year, he showed up to spring training with some ankle pain but otherwise feeling ready to play. A routine physical ended that plan. Blood work showed that Wilson’s kidney function had dipped to 24 percent. Eventually he was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and told he had only one working kidney, the right one, and even that one wasn’t working well.

At first, Wilson wasn’t too concerned. He had had three major ligament surgeries and all had gone well.

“In my mind, I was just thinking this is going to be one more surgery, no big deal,”he said.

Then he realized, this could end his career.

Wilson went on the deceased donor transplant list and started taking medicine. Baseball, he knew, would be on hold until he could get another kidney. The medicine sapped his strength and he gained weight. At first he thought that he would prefer an anonymous donor, as he did not want to feel indebted to anyone.

But after two years, he realized that he would be willing to give someone his kidney. Why shouldn’t he accept the same gift from someone else?

Throughout the process, he kept working out, trying to keep his body as baseball-ready as possible.

“I kept my mind on the goal of trying to get back into baseball, because I really wanted to play and I felt that I had a lot left to prove,” Wilson said. “To be 100 percent honest, it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t get back.”

Contributing to his certainty was the support Wilson had from the White Sox’s vice president of player development, Buddy Bell.

First, he needed medical clearance. Mishler, his doctor, talked to the team and gave Wilson his blessing.

“There wasn’t any reason for him not to go for it. If there are issues and problems, we would deal with them one step along the way,” Mishler said. “There was no reason to crush his dream. But of course if he hadn’t gotten a transplant, there would be no way he could do that.”

After seven days in the hospital and a few months of recovery, Wilson went back to Arizona in early 2014 for spring training. While there, he developed a rash that turned out to be a harbinger of a complication of his transplant.

Once more, he refused to let his health derail his dream. He kept going to the gym, pushing himself to be the best he could be.

This January, he reported early to spring training, a work ethic that eventually got him elevated to Triple-A ball. While he’s on the disabled list this weekend, Wilson is still looking forward to donning that uniform and walking onto Victory Field.

And lots of family and friends — including Lori Lord, minus one kidney — will be in the stands, rooting for him.

Call Star reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.