Mike Megna, a police officer whose health was critically affected by the September 11 attacks, has reunited with the woman who donated a kidney and saved his life. The emotional meeting took place at a diner in New Jersey, where both had tears in their eyes as they embraced.
Megna, 54, fell critically ill after shovelling dust for days following 9/11. Stacey Lott, 55, a home designer from Wantage, New Jersey, gave him a kidney in a transplant that saved his life. Megna invited the Mirror to their reunion last week.
A second chance at life
Megna described Lott as his "guardian angel" and said: "Stacey saved my life - it's as simple as that. Without her kidney I wouldn't be here today." He added: "I just think that it's really remarkable that, thanks to her, I can live my life now - it's like I got a second chance. I'm just so happy to be alive."
Megna said he sees things differently now: "Things that really aren't important: they really aren't important. I try not to dwell on things that I can't change or make happen. I'm more focused now - I don't know, like looking at the way I used to be and the way I am now, and I think I'm two different people."
He added: "After I got this kidney, I'm just more of a changed of a person - a better person. And that's all down to Stacey. You know, for her to go this far and to give me - it's not like a car or a money. It's a part of your body. She gave me an organ. And it could have, it could have affected her negatively, which it didn't. Like, everything turned out just great. She's healthy."
A chance meeting at a school reunion
The pair attended Sandshore Road elementary school in Budd Lake together in the 1970s and only remember each other a little. But Megna had kept in touch with Lott's brother. The transplant only happened after a chance meeting at a school reunion.
Lott explained how she reconnected with Megna: "So a friend of mine had asked me to go out with him to a local place. A couple of people were gathering from high school and it's not something I typically would do - that's not my thing. But he had said: 'you should come because a couple of girls that I had graduated with were going to be there. So I decided to go and then obviously I saw Mike there and we were talking and I didn't kind of know at that time how severe his situation was."
She recalled: "But he had told me that he had needed the kidney. So we were talking and I know him from the past so we were just 'b.s-ing' about years ago. And I remember saying goodbye to him and I said: 'if you need a kidney I would definitely pursue it and see if I could be a match for you.' So a couple months went by and he's friends with my brother. So my brother reached out to me and said, you know, 'Mike's in really bad shape and he's in the hospital and he really needs the kidney'."
Lott went through the medical steps to see if she could donate: "All of the medical things that I had to go through were just giving me the all-clear. You know it was just meant to be that we matched up and they kept approving me for every step of the way. And I was able to, you know, got clear to give him the kidney. That's fate as well. It's amazing. Like, I just knew that I was meant to see him that day. And definitely there's a higher power that is up there that put us in that, you know, place that day. And I just knew it was the right thing to do."
Health decline after 9/11
In 2001, Megna was working for the New Jersey Police Department when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into targets including the World Trade Center in New York, killing nearly 3,000 people in total. As soon as the towers were hit, Megna crossed into Manhattan to help with the search and rescue mission.
He explained his role: "I was a police officer, I was there just to help to look for people that were trapped. I stayed overnight until the 12th, went home, showered, went to work, and went back on the 13th, 14th. But I had a job, I was a full time police officer so I went on my days off or before I went to work. If I worked a 3-11 shift I would go there, I'd get up at 6 and go work half a day and then go to work. I did that for like a month."
He added: "A couple of years later I started to urinate blood and after a bunch of tests and procedures it was found out that I had a kidney disease. I became really ill. I got sick for like 10 years and it just got worse and worse and worse and then in 2019 I went on dialysis and I stayed on dialysis for almost four years. It was a result from all the dust that I breathed in."
Megna described his ordeal: "I would do dialysis, throw up, and then pass out until the next day. Every day I was, I would sleep, like, hours, like 12 hours a day. And then it's like, you know, dialysis is torture. There's no other way to describe it. It's nothing healthy about it. It runs your life. It ruins your life. It's just a horrible, horrible experience."
Of Lott's life-saving gesture, he said simply: "Oh, my God, I love her to death. I cannot thank her enough, you know, for giving me her kidney."
