For most of his life, Michael Fauntleroy was accustomed to helping others. Michael had spent years sponsoring local schools, managing job training, and organizing community dinners through the Alliance of Black Telecommunications Employees (ABLE), an employee resource group he helped lead during his 30 years at AT&T.
Every year at the holidays, Michael and his coworkers at ABLE made sure that neighbors in the community had a festive meal, and more, to celebrate, “We would purchase the full dinners – turkey, the sides, the dressing, and everything. We’d try to do little toy drives and clothing drives. It was fantastic being able to see the joy on people’s faces and see the people that really needed it. That’s profound. And it just speaks to so much about our mission.” Through his work at ABLE, Michael exercised his entrepreneurial spirit and his ability to bring joy to others, “Management gave us an opportunity. It was almost like running our own little business within the company.”
But after years of serving his community, Michael learned it was his turn to receive the care and compassion he had given so freely to others. After returning to Washington D.C. from Florida to care for his aging mother, the Stage 3 kidney disease that Michael had been managing for 20 years was showing signs of progressing, “I noticed that I was getting weak, appetites changed. There were just little subtle things that. I’d get a little back pain. But if it wasn’t for the blood test that showed that I had kidney disease, I never would have known.”
Shortly after his return to D.C., Michael’s kidney disease progressed to Stages 4 and 5, and his doctors placed him on dialysis, “I was scared to death. To actually have needles inserted into your arm and being connected to a machine – I had no earthly idea what to do.” The nurses at Washington Hospital Center were a lifeline, “I was about ready to give up if it wasn’t for a couple of nurses that explained to me what dialysis was about. They really calmed me down and really put me in a better place where I could accept what I had to do.”
Michael came to understand that in addition to dialysis, his treatment would require changes to his daily lifestyle and routines, “I’ve been on different diets, different types of medications. And I learned a different way of eating and doing things.” Michael’s dietitian at his dialysis center in Columbia Heights referred him to Food & Friends and he immediately engaged with the extensive educational resources available to every client, “I get on some of the webinars and it’s a wealth of information. I get recipes on how to do certain things, how to use certain foods like the turkey burgers and chicken fillets. I’m just really astounded that the program does as much as it does.”
He was relieved that even with a newly restricted diet, Food & Friends’ meal delivery and nutritional counseling let him heal and still find joy in the food, “There’s so much you can do with the menu, so you never have the same thing. It never gets dull, it never gets boring – it’s just so much you can do.” Michael also took classes with the National Kidney Foundation to learn to manage swelling, anemia, and other symptoms of his condition.
Even as he’s worked to proactively improve his health, Michael has sat on the waiting lists for a new kidney at both Georgetown and George Washington University Hospitals. Then on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, he received a promising phone call from Georgetown, “I was on my way to church, and they called me and told me they had a kidney for me and could I come to the hospital. I was so excited and so speechless. I think I was at the hospital within the hour. When I got there, I got registered. They told me that they were still running tests on the kidney to make sure the kidney was functional. But some of the tests didn’t come out the way that they wanted it to. So right now, I’m on standby.” Michael wasn’t discouraged by the setback, and his characteristic optimism left him feeling hopeful and excited about his new future despite the delay.
This year, as he waited for more information on a transplant, Michael received one of the Thanksgiving feasts that Food & Friends prepares for clients and their families, after spending so many holidays making sure others had a turkey of their own, “I’m speechless again, because I’ve never been on this end of the spectrum before. And now having to experience what other people had experienced when we would deliver the Thanksgiving meals to them. Now I’m on the receiving end and I’m just overwhelmed and it’s just amazing.”
A few days after his first Food & Friends’ Thanksgiving meal with family, Michael received some good news: his new kidney was ready. On Friday, November 24 he successfully underwent kidney transplant surgery and is recovering.
