A former Red Sox pitcher is in need of a kidney and looking for a donor.
Jeff Plympton grew up playing baseball in Plainville, Massachusetts, and now works for the town of Wrentham.
"To get the call from the Red Sox, it was, 'Wow, that's amazing,'" he said. "Got to play in my backyard at Pawtucket, then eventually get to Boston.
Drafted by Boston in 1987, Plympton reached the majors in 1991. He spent his whole career in the Red Sox' organization.
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He enjoys talking about sports, but he says shining the spotlight on his own health wasn't easy.
"My doctors from Rhode Island Hospital are fantastic. What they said to me is, 'We don't really know when it's going to fail, if your kidneys will fail, but it's a good time to get ahead of this whole thing. Dialysis is around the corner.'"
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He says it wasn't exactly a curveball when he learned in 2009 he had polycystic kidney disease. It's genetic, and his mother and grandmother both had it.
"The blood test is the key, so the creatinine level, which normal creatinine level for a human being is around 1.0, I am now around 5.7," Plympton said. "At 8-9, that's when it becomes failure. That's the steady progression over a period of time."
He's now on a regional transplant list as he waits for a kidney donation.
Since he went public, Plympton says he's had several friends reach out to tell him they're getting tested right away.
"It means a lot to me, but somewhere in my mind, I also believe that it's helping other people, as well," he said. "Sometimes you hear about things too late, and, 'Well, I could've helped this person or done this.' Just an opportunity to spread that good word."
