‘Dear God, open these doors now’

“I’m just really glad God has allowed me to live in a community like Aurora!”
So says lifelong Aurora resident Mike Eberhardt, who recently underwent kidney transplant surgery in Omaha that was accompanied by an extraordinary set of circumstances that he and his wife, Georgia, can only attribute the hand of the Almighty.
To begin at the beginning, Eberhardt was born and raised in Aurora and worked for the city for more than 40 years. Beginning in 1976, Eberhardt said he did about every job that city maintenance workers do, from dumping garbage to digging graves and helping with funerals at the cemetery. Then around the turn of the 21st Century he became city street superintendent continuing in that role until his retirement several years ago. 
Always a hard worker, Eberhardt says he had begun to slow down even before his retirement, lacking the stamina he once had which he was to find out was the result of poor kidney function. Then in March of 2018 following a kidney biopsy he was diagnosed with advanced kidney failure. 
By 2022 Eberhardt’s kidneys were failing enough that he was facing dialysis, in order to take over the work of purifying his blood that his damaged kidneys used to do. 
Not wanting to make a trip to the dialysis center in Grand Island three days a week for hemodialysis, Eberhardt opted for peritoneal dialysis which he could do nightly at home while he slept. 
After starting dialysis in 2022, Eberhardt also began the evaluation process to see if he was a candidate for a kidney transplant. For that he had to make several trips to the Organ Transplant Center at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha. Following initial testing, Eberhardt was told he needed to lose significant weight before he could be placed on the list for a donated kidney. 
Determined to do everything he could to get a life-saving kidney, Eberhardt dropped 50 pounds over several months through diet and exercise and was put on the transplant list. Then all there was to do, along with some additional testing, was to wait. 
A false alarm at Christmas
The Eberhardts thought the waiting had come to an end three days before Christmas last December when Mike got a call from the transplant clinic.  
“She said, ‘Mike, are you still wanting a kidney?’ And I said, yes. She said, ‘Well, we have one for you,’ and then she gave me the information.”
The couple was told to quickly get themselves to Omaha and check in at Clarkson Tower at the hospital where transplants are performed. 
“Well, we had stuff ready to go and we were just getting things ready and the phone rang again. So I answered it and it was the same gal calling back apologizing because the kidney they had for me was damaged. There was something not right about it. I guess the doctor had looked it over and turned it down.”
Despite the crushing disappointment, the Eberhardts thought of the family of the donor who had lost a loved one just before Christmas and offered up prayers for them.
Just over a month later on Friday, Jan. 26, the Eberhardts found themselves heading for Omaha again, but this time it was for one more test on his heart to see if he was ready for a transplant. 
“It was a really weird morning that morning because we had to be down there by 7 o’clock,” Mike said. “So we had to leave here at 3 o’clock in the morning. And it was foggy so it just seemed like it took a little bit longer to get there.”
The Eberhardts both said they were praying the entire trip to Omaha, she for protection of the couple’s children and that the fog would lift, and he that the test would go well. He said what he wasn’t asking for is for the Lord to provide a kidney that day, however the Lord had other plans. 
Arriving at Nebraska Medicine, Mike got checked in and went into the procedure room where he would undergo an electrocardiogram under chemical stress.

Urgent phone calls
After the two-hour drive from home, during Mike’s test Georgia went into the ladies room taking both their cell phones with her. Suddenly both phones started going off at the same time. Ignoring Mike’s phone for the moment, she answered her phone and found it was their daughter.
“Angie, is everything alright at home?” she asked.
“Mom, they’re trying to find you and Dad,” Angie began, continuing by saying the transplant clinic had called and said they were not supposed to leave the hospital. 
“You’ve got to hang up and call this lady back on your phone,” Angie instructed. 
“Well, I knew who she was talking about because we had just seen her,” Georgia said later. 
Going down the hallway outside the procedure room, Georgia asked staff members, “Can you open these doors for me to get in there?”
She was told, however, that the doors could only be opened from the inside as the staff did not know how to open them from the outside. 
“So I just went in front of those doors,” Georgia said, “but I thought, well, they might pop open so I’m gonna stand back so they don’t smack into me. And I put my hands up here and I said, ‘Dear God, open these doors, now, please!”
To her shock and that of the staff members present, the doors swung open. 
“They just swung open!” she said. “Those people about fell over on their desk, and I went ‘It worked!”
Going inside she located Mike who had successfully completed his test and told him to call the clinic, which he did immediately.
“She said, ‘Mike, we have a kidney. Do you want one?’ She says ‘Is it a go?’ And I said
yes,” Mike recalls. “I said I’m shocked. I said, this has got to be a God thing.”
About five hours later Mike was in surgery, receiving the kidney of a 35-year-old man who had been pronounced brain dead. He says he was actually third in line behind other organ recipients who were getting transplants from the donor as well.

Home to Aurora
Another providence connected with Eberhardt’s transplant is the fact that he was released from the hospital to come home to Aurora less than a week after his surgery. Typically transplant candidates are told to expect to have to stay within an hour of the hospital for up to six weeks following their surgery. 
More than a month after his operation, Mike says he is getting stronger but still has a ways to go in his recovery. He recently had the catheter in his abdomen removed because with a functioning kidney he no longer needs dialysis and is still feeling sore from that procedure, but overall he is thankful for God’s grace in seeing him through the ordeal and also the prayers of many people who were lifting him up during that time. 
As he reflects back on the moments before going into surgery he recalls a feeling of peace from on high.
“Just this voice came into my head,” he remembers. “I kept saying, ‘Oh Lord, help me through this. I’m giving myself to you. Help me through this. And I heard this voice in my mind, and it was not my voice. It said, ‘It will be okay. It’ll be okay.’”