Geist Man Walks to Raise Awareness for Kidney Donation
The coffee shop is full of friends meeting friends, co-workers meeting co-workers, and people running in for a quick cup of energy. D. Scott Goodwin, an electrical engineer and 20-year resident of Geist/Fishers, is here for a different reason.
He walks in and scans the bustling place of business. He is carrying two phones, and he is looking for me. Our eyes meet — cautious, anxious — and we slowly walk toward each other. I reach out, shake his hand, introduce myself, and we sit. He isn’t here for a jolt of caffeine or to discuss work. He is here because he is dying. He is looking for someone — anyone — who can donate a kidney so that he can live another day.
Scott has polycystic kidney disease (PKD), a genetic condition he inherited from his father, and is in stage 4 kidney failure. The disease causes cysts to grow on and inside the kidneys until eventually, the cysts take over and shut down kidney function entirely.
He has known this since the age of 14, when a pickup game of football turned into an ER visit that would change the course of his life. Since that day, Scott has educated himself on how to live a healthy lifestyle, determined to squeeze every last day of function from his kidneys. He has done all the right things — a healthy diet and exercise — but his clock is ticking, and he feels it.
At the age of 54, Scott is sick and tired. But to raise awareness, he has decided he is going to walk the Geist 10K this year. This won’t be his first time. He ran the Geist 10K in 2016, and the Geist Half in 2018 and 2019. But this year, with his dwindling health, the stakes are much higher.
In 2022, when Scott’s family members were ruled out as donors and when his kidneys took a significant turn for the worse, he began a mission to do all he could to save his own life. He reached out to the PKD Foundation and quickly realized that, although the foundation does amazing work, it isn’t set up to help individual people like himself.
So he made it his mission to raise awareness about the disease — thus his reason for walking the Geist 10K.
“A lot of people are suffering,” he says. “Some are worse than me and cannot advocate for themselves. I am in a position right now — today — that I can help them. I am not going to be in this position for long. When I start dialysis, which could be any day now, things will look different for me. Right now, I can make a difference, and that is why I am walking — to raise awareness while I can.”
Awareness means knowing that you can sign up to donate a kidney, and even if you aren’t a match for Scott, you could be a match for someone else. Awareness means knowing that you could be a living donor — a living person can donate one kidney. The body has two and can function well with just one.
Awareness means knowing that there is a voucher program so that living donors can be readily available to people like him. Awareness means that PKD could take the life of this father to daughters Kaitlin, Madilin and Avalin, of this husband of 30 years to Christina, of this son, and it could steal from this earth a human being who lives in our amazing community. Awareness means that you could make a difference.
Scott and his army will be walking across Geist Bridge, holding up handmade signs with words that make the world a better place: kindness, love, justice, peace. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, so Scott chose words that put the focus on others.
A lifelong lover of music, he and the Goodwin Transplant Army will march to create awareness of PKD — and most importantly, to save the life of their good friend.
As we finish up our interview, one of Scott’s phones rings. He quickly looks down at both phones and sees that it is his daughter calling. He picks up the other flip phone that isn’t ringing and holds it up to show me.
“This is my kidney phone,” he says. “When this one rings, there’s a match.”
If you would like to become a living donor, or if you know someone who would, visit them online to register with the National Kidney Registry.
