As they sit down to turkey and all the trimmings, their thoughts and prayers will focus on the Nov. 2 telephone call that came while Doug was undergoing dialysis at Hutchinson Hospital.

The kidney, from an unknown donor, began its job of flushing liquid immediately. The first words from his daughter, Katie, 18, when he came from surgery were: "Hey, Dad, look at the bag. It's working."

On Tuesday, the Sillins shared the story that has encompassed their lives - orbiting them through emotions from anger and fear to joy and gratefulness for the gift of a kidney from an unknown donor whose life has ended.

Doug Sillin, 52, reclined on the overstuffed couch in the family room of their Sterling home while Chris Sillin settled into a nearby rocker-recliner.

In his former life, Sillin, a youthful athlete, a mortician and funeral director by profession, and a season ticket-holding Kansas City Chiefs fan, moved with energy and zest and accepted good health as a given.

In a journal she's titled "The Walk," Chris chronicled their ordeal. It began with Doug's "bouts of illness." He continued working but felt an unexplained fatigue and lethargy, beginning in January 2004.

In response to those tests, the couple was referred to a Wichita nephrologist who had unfathomable news: Doug was in end stage renal disease. Within months, his kidneys would fail. He faced dialysis or a kidney transplant.

At Christmastime, they met surgeon Dr. Charles Shield and began the bank of tests in preparation for a March 22, Easter weekend transplant - with Chris as the living donor.

Doug and three dialysis buddies organized the "Band of Brothers." They whiled away the hours in conversations about eating, recipes and traveling.

Looking with hope to the future, in retrospect, the lessons he's learned through illness and surgeries have made him a better person, Doug Sillin said.

As a mortician, he'd harbored negative thoughts as he prepared the body of a transplant donor - because of the extra work. In a matter of seconds, that attitude changed. He's an advocate for transplant donors.

Family, employees, community, prayer groups, old classmates and friends, cards and letters all are a part of this Thanksgiving, Doug Sillin said.

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