Arkansas Mother donating kidney to son after his over 10-year struggle with incurable disease in heartwarming family story

A gift just in time for the holiday season.

An Arkansas family will be celebrating Thanksgiving differently this year compared to the last decade after it was discovered a mom held her son’s lifesaving cure.

Kenneth Grantham, 31, has been living with IGA Nephropathy, a non-curable kidney disease since his diagnosis in February 2012.

“It was on my 20th birthday whenever I got the first scan,” said Grantham, who goes by Chase, told KARK.

While he has lived with the disease for over a decade, his kidneys began to fail and was soon in need of a transplant.

“I went from stage 3 to stage 5 now,” Grantham said.

Twenty of his friends and family were tested to see if they were compatible to be a donor for Grantham, and his mother turned out to be the answer.

The auto-immune disease occurs when clumps of antibodies are deposited in your kidneys, causing inflammation and kidney damage, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The disease is more common in East Asian or white European males between the ages of 10-40.

After hitting several medical setbacks along the way, relief finally came for the mother-and-son duo as they were approved for surgery to take place in December.

“It was words you waited to hear for a long time,” the father of one said.

Grantham’s mother, Karen Wright said it’s been a journey getting to the point they are at now.

“It’s been very emotional,” Wright told the outlet saying she didn’t think twice about becoming a donor. “It’s something a mom does. Do you know people say, ‘How could you do that,’ and I say, ‘How could you not do that?’ It’s your kid, it’s what you’re supposed to do.”

When she first learned about her son’s rare disease, Wright decided to become a nurse, to help out even more.

“I just decided I was going to school and become a nurse so I could know what they were talking about,” she said.

While he has been dealt a tough hand over the last decade, Grantham says there was some good that came out of it.

“It’s made me slow down and appreciate things that I wouldn’t have happened,” Grantham said. “It’s made me and my mom closer and everyone in my family.”