Jody Thompson had known since 2007 he would someday need a kidney transplant. For reasons unique to his family, the former Kentucky Wildcats guard had ample reason to fret over that.
Polycystic kidney disease, a hereditary condition, has run in Thompson’s family for generations. Yet when Dr. Ravinder Bhagrath told Jody in September 2016, that the time for a kidney transplant was near, Thompson, 45, made a decision that could have proven fatal.
The Pikeville banker, a married father of three daughters, chose to ignore his doctor’s words. “I decided ‘I don’t want to deal with this.