RICHFIELD, Utah — A lot of people get a second chance at life, but what do they get a third?
For the first time in six months, Henry Coulter was able to join his Richfield High swim teammates in the pool on Tuesday. In May, he had his second kidney transplant.
"Jumping in with all my swimming partners... It was so amazing to finally get back in the pool with them and reconnect and feel what it’s like to get back on the team," he said.
Born in St. George, Henry was a little over a year old when he was diagnosed with a rare disease known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. There’s a vaccine for it now, but there wasn’t then.
Henry received a kidney transplant from his closest donor: His dad Matt.
"I tried to keep as good care as I can with that one," Henry said. "It's lasted me so long and since I did get it so young, it wasn't expected to last as long as it did, so I'm so grateful for that."
Last January, on his first day as a lifeguard at the Richfield pool, he felt an intense pain. His kidney had run out.
Matt Coulter said giving his son a kidney wasn’t as hard as watching that kidney fail.
"The little stuff that I've been through in helping him, like, compares nothing to what he's been through," Matt said. "On this last time, was really hard on him. It was really hard on him."
Henry went into dialysis at Sevier Valley Hospital and had six months to get a new kidney. With existing transplant antibodies and so many on the waiting list for a first transplant, he needed a miracle.
That miracle was a recently retired Army drill sergeant from Draper named Monica Leger.
For her 45th birthday on May 3, Leger decided to donate the gift of her kidney. But she says she is the one who received a gift, tearing up when she found out just the first name of the recipient and his age.
"I did give a gift to someone else, but I think I got a bigger gift," she said. "That was the gift to me, just knowing his name."
When the time came for that third transplant, Henry said he was more afraid for his sister, who just got her learning permit, and his mom.
"The initial thing was my mom's like, 'Yeah, we'll come and visit you after the transplant,' but my sister's gonna be driving now, like, 'Oh, I'm more nervous for you than ... my transplant,'" he joked.
But his sister got their mom Alisa to the hospital just fine, where she said she was fortunate enough to witness a third miracle.
That miracle continued as Henry was doing laps with his team Wednesday preparing for his senior year.
Henry now hopes that with his third chance at life, he'll be able to give others a second chance.
"I'm going to be an EMT. That's what I'm going to do right after high school," he said. "I just want to give other people second chances and third chances at life just because I know how valuable that was to me to get it, and I want to... keep it going."
