Former Black Eyed Peas singer Kim Hill donates kidney to brother in Syracuse

By Amber Smith/The Post-Standard 

It was December 2005.

Kim Hill was about to donate her kidney to her father when she had a dream: She lay next to somebody in a dark room. A hand reached to take her kidney. She assumed the person was her father, but she awoke before she could see the person's face.

Days before the surgery was to occur, doctors discovered that Hill's father had a stroke. He wound up needing heart bypass surgery, and he never recovered enough to go through with a kidney transplant. He died a year later.

Today, Hill, a Syracuse native and singer who used to sing with the Black Eyed Peas, is reflective. "I realized that it was a spiritual lesson for me. I was never meant to do the surgery for my father. I was only meant to offer him my kidney," she says. Today she knows the other person in her dream was her brother, and that she was meant to donate her kidney to him.

Hill and her brother, Brian Keith Hill are scheduled for surgery at Upstate Medical University today. Surgeons will take one of Kim Hill's healthy kidneys and transplant it into Brian Hill. Such living donor transplants are not uncommon; 5,204 were done last year in hospitals throughout the United States, according to statistics from the United Network for Organ Sharing. At Upstate since September 2007, surgeons have completed 36 kidney transplants from live donors. In November, it was one of three programs in New York State to receive an award for excellent outcomes from the Department of Health and Human Services; its one-year post-transplant survival rate is 96 percent.

Brian, 49, was the oldest of the three Hill children growing up in Camillus. Kim, 40, was the youngest. Teretha Williams was the middle child. Brian and Teretha still live here. Brian is founding pastor of The King's Healing Room, a ministry in The Galleries in downtown Syracuse. Kim recently moved back from Los Angeles, en route to a new home in Harlem. She used to sing with the Black-Eyed Peas.

She says her brother was in his early 20s when he developed kidney disease. Her mother, Shirley Hill donated a kidney in a 1985 operation at Upstate, but within a year that kidney failed too. Brian has been on dialysis ever since.

He declined previous offers from Teretha and Kim and others. "It's difficult to ask someone for something that God gave them and is not supposed to come back out," Brian explains. "So, yes, it took a little time to just settle with it.

"I've been able to maintain a very healthy lifestyle, a very productive lifestyle - with children, a wife, family, a ministry - on dialysis."

But he has prayed, and he believes the time for surgery is now. He and Kim set a surgery date after their father's death.

"After Dad died, I had already gone through the tests, and I felt there was a calling in my life for this surgery," Kim says. "It was terrible to lose him, but it was an eye-opening experience for all of us."

When Brian went for pre-surgical testing, he discovered one of his kidneys was cancerous. Surgeons removed the organ before the cancer spread. Then Brian had to wait two years before considering a transplant.

So they set another date, in August 2009. Then Kim discovered she was pregnant. Now her son, Cassius is 11 months old.

If all goes well, Kim should be released from the hospital Friday, and Brian on Saturday.

"All my life I've wanted to do this for my brother," Kim says. Then she became a mom and understood the depth of love a mother has for her child. "I'm doing this not just because he's my brother, but because he's my mother's son."

ABOUT LIVING DONATION

* Kidneys, segments of liver, lobes of lungs, and portions of intestines and pancreases can be transplanted from living donors to save and/or greatly improve the life of transplant recipients.
* Biologically related donors include blood relatives such as parents, siblings and adult children. 
* Unrelated donors can include spouses or significant others, coworkers, friends or even strangers. 
* Living donors must be in good overall physical and mental health and free form uncontrolled high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, AIDS, hepatitis and organ diseases.
* Living donors cannot be paid for their organs, but some of their expenses can be reimbursed.