Susan Wood, 73, spent five hours trapped in a burning house in Dallas, Georgia, on November 11, 2025, unable to reach her husband or pet dog before both died in the smoke and flames. She survived, but the fire nearly killed her anyway, in a slower and crueler way: the smoke she inhaled destroyed her kidneys, and nearly a year later she is still fighting to stay alive while she waits for a stranger to save her.
A Fire That Didn't End When the Flames Went Out
According to FOX 5 Atlanta, the fire started in the fireplace and filled the home with thick smoke so fast that Wood could not get to her husband or their dog before both perished in the blaze. The station reports that the severe smoke inhalation she suffered went on to cause kidney damage that progressed into full kidney failure, a devastating second blow layered on top of the loss of her family and home.
Wood then spent three months in a hospital burn unit, much of it on a ventilator, while enduring painful skin grafts on her hands, the outlet reports. She has since been released, but the kidney damage did not heal. The station's report notes she now undergoes regular dialysis treatments while she searches for a living donor who can give her a working kidney.
No Timeline for a Match
Medical providers have not said how long Wood may remain on the active transplant waiting list before a potential donor is found, per the same account. That uncertainty leaves her in a kind of limbo familiar to thousands of patients nationwide: tethered to dialysis, hoping a compatible donor steps forward before her health deteriorates further.
Anyone interested in being tested as a potential donor for Wood can reach out through Emory Healthcare or Piedmont Healthcare, the outlet reports, though the article notes it does not detail specific eligibility requirements beyond pointing toward those two health systems.
A Broader Shift Toward Older Transplant Patients
Wood's case fits into a wider trend playing out across the country's transplant system. Data from Duke Health, as cited by FOX 5 Atlanta, shows that kidney transplants among seniors 65 and older have jumped sixfold since 2020, reflecting a medical shift toward offering transplants to older patients once considered too high-risk for the surgery.
That shift has not eased the broader shortage of donor kidneys. Federal guidance from the Health Resources and Services Administration notes that every year, thousands of people are removed from transplant waitlists because they become too sick to safely undergo surgery, and that living donors — family, friends, co-workers, or even strangers — can shorten or eliminate that wait entirely for someone like Wood.
Separate federal data on organ donation statistics describes kidney patients as making up the majority of people on the national transplant waiting list, even as kidney transplants remain the most commonly performed transplant procedure each year. Whatever the precise scope of that national backlog, for Wood the math is simple and personal: she needs one living donor to come forward.
