Chris Holloway runs Cork & Candles, a candle shop in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, while managing a grueling medical routine: roughly 12 hours of dialysis every day as he waits for a second kidney transplant. Holloway was diagnosed in 2005 with a rare kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, or FSGS, and has spent the past two decades navigating its effects on his life and his business.
Holloway received his first kidney transplant in 2016, according to Franchise Journal. Years later, that transplanted kidney began to fail. Accounts of exactly when differ: Cork & Candles Franchising states the kidney began to fail in May 2024, while Holloway told Franchise Journal, “Things were stable until July 2024 when I was told the kidney had run its course.”
Holloway first began in-center dialysis in October and later switched to peritoneal dialysis at home. “Now I do peritoneal dialysis at home, about 12 hours a day,” he said, per the same account. That routine runs alongside the demands of operating Cork & Candles, which is located in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, as confirmed by the Inquirer.
A Search for a Direct Donor
Holloway's business partner tried to help in the most personal way possible. Cork & Candles co-founder David Straub was tested as a potential kidney donor but was not a match, explaining that his kidney was not of a quality he could donate, the Franchise Journal report notes. With that option closed off, Holloway and his family turned to a broader search, seeking a direct donor through the National Kidney Registry, according to Cork & Candles Franchising.
The search comes against a backdrop that makes Holloway's situation far from unusual. Cbsnews.com reports that the average lifespan of a donated kidney is between eight and 15 years, a window that lines up with the roughly eight years his first transplant lasted before it began to fail. For patients like Holloway who received their first transplant due to FSGS, the odds are sobering: a study examined by pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov found FSGS recurred in 32% of transplant recipients studied, and that 39% of those patients lost their new kidney over a median of five years.
Joining a Long National Waiting List
Holloway's wait also places him among a much larger population. More than 100,000 people are on the national organ transplant waiting list, and more than 90 percent of them are waiting for a kidney, according to Fox 29. Federal organ donation statistics materials maintained by organdonor.gov similarly track how many people are waiting for each type of organ nationwide.
Despite the daily demands of dialysis and the uncertainty of waiting for a match, Holloway has continued to run his Ardmore shop, which opened in November 2024, according to MontCo.Today. In a video published by CBS News Philadelphia, reporter Wakisha Bailey interviewed Holloway as he shared a message of hope with the community while he continues to wait.
