Oftentimes in sibling relationships, the eldest protects the youngest. But for Drexel football alums and brothers Tom and Steve Terebus, the roles were recently reversed. Younger brother Tom, who lives in Indiana, Pa., stepped up and donated a healthy kidney through a unique exchange program in order to free older brother Steve from a life of dialysis and give him a second chance.
“If it wasn’t for my brother, I probably wouldn’t be here today,” says Steve Terebus, a 1969 Drexel graduate and retired bus driver who lives in Johnstown, Pa. “He’s my hero.”
The Terebus brothers are former varsity players for the Drexel football program, which disbanded in 1973.
Raised in a football-crazed family in western Pennsylvania, the two were lured to Drexel with football scholarships and the opportunity to enroll in the school’s popular co-op program.
“We usually had 4,000–5,000 fans at our games, and sometimes up to 10,000 or 12,000 fans,” Steve Terebus recalls nostalgically. Tom rebuffs; he remembers it differently. To his brother he says, “I think you may have taken a few too many shots to the head while playing at Drexel because the only crowds I remember that big were maybe at homecoming!”
Steve was a muscular and athletic defensive lineman while at Drexel, but later in life he suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes. One night in 2010, he lost about eight units of blood and his kidneys shut down. Two and a half years of dialysis ensued, a draining process in which he was hooked up to a machine nine hours a day.
“If it wasn’t for my brother, I probably wouldn’t be here today. He’s my hero.”
– Steve Terebus, 1969 Drexel alum
Tom, who played defensive back for Drexel, agonized over his brother’s rapid decline, fearing he wouldn’t last the average four-year wait to receive a kidney.
“My father died of renal failure in 1994,” says Tom, who is 65, three years younger than his brother. “I could see my brother going down that same path pretty quickly.”
So Tom, a retired civil engineer, explored the idea of donating a kidney. A direct donation wasn’t possible since the brothers weren’t exact matches. However, through a paired-kidney exchange program, Tom was able to donate to a man in Ohio while Steve received a kidney from a New York man.
Finding a match through the National Kidney Registry (NKR) was only half the battle. Tom, who had endured several back surgeries, was put through the gamut of tests before gaining clearance from the doctors. He was also helping his wife grieve the loss of her sister to cancer a month earlier.
The lengthy surgeries were scheduled for June 25 – Tom’s birthday – in Pittsburgh.
The road to recovery is long, but 18 months later, both brothers are healed and Steve no longer needs dialysis. This past summer, just a year after a successful surgery, Steve played golf, sometimes skipping the cart in favor of walking the course. He also bowls and sings in multiple choir groups.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, 100,602 people are currently waiting for life-saving kidney transplants in the United States. Every 20 minutes someone is added to the kidney transplant list; 14 people die each day while waiting for the organ.
Last year, 14,029 kidney transplants took place in the United States, with only 4,715 kidneys coming from living donors.
That’s a number Tom Terebus, now an advocate for the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, hopes continues to rise.
“Just the fact that my brother is healthy and doing well means everything to me,” Tom says. “To see him play golf and go bowling – stuff that he hasn’t been able to do in years – means everything.
“[The NKR program] helped allow me to do that, even though we weren’t blood matches,” he adds. “I wasn’t aware of it. Maybe (our story) can help others become aware of it.”
Tom says Drexel football alumni still keep in touch. A couple years ago, in fact, a bunch of former players returned to campus for a reunion. Steve couldn’t attend because of his health. But, thanks to his brother’s donation, there’s a good chance he’ll be at the next one.