A New York man who covered a Times Square billboard during his 2018 search for a kidney donor is now recovering from the long-awaited transplant surgery.
On April 25, Marc Weiner, a 58-year-old cancer survivor from Great Neck — after enduring dialysis treatments three days a week since October 2016 — finally received a life-changing kidney transplant that was years in the making.
“That billboard,” Weiner told the Post, “that was clearly, unequivocally, a lifesaver.”
The smiling, bespectacled TV news executive was pictured on a massive billboard erected over the Crossroads of the World in the summer of 2018.
“My name is Marc. I need a Kidney. YOU can Help!” the sign read, along with a link to a now-defunct website for his donor search.
The billboard was commissioned by the employer of Weiner’s wife Lisa, and prompted responses from now-retired NYPD Det. Michael Lollo and hundreds of other applicants.
Lollo had told the Post he saw the story of Weiner’s donor search and got tested to see if he was a match.
While Lollo and another woman turned out not to be matches for Weiner, it was through their own donations that they were able to give Weiner what he called a “golden ticket” — one that ultimately allowed him the chance to get a kidney through a donor swap program.
Lollo became a kidney donor to a woman he did not know, Ruth Tisak.
“Without their generosity and their proactive nature, forget it, I’d still be waiting,” Weiner said. “So, that billboard did a lot.”
Weiner was in the middle of a Zoom call while working from home last month when he said he got a call from New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. When he didn’t answer, he received a text message.
“I get a text from the transplant coordinator, and she says, ‘Important.’” I say, ‘Headline?’”
She wrote back: “Match.”
Weiner’s wife called the coordinator right away.
“My wife comes down the stairs full of tears,” he recalled. “I’m sitting in the chair in my office. I tilt, and I think I said, ‘Oh my god’.”
“She comes over, gives me a huge embrace and starts to cry,” Weiner continued. “We started to reminisce – how long it’s been and how exciting. This just popped up and it’s gonna happen. Just like that.”
The swap program allows a person to donate their kidney to a stranger so another person –a recipient of their choosing — can receive an organ from another donor.
Weiner, who shares a daughter with his wife, does not know his donor, a 21-year-old man who chose to remain anonymous. He said he hopes to one day meet him, if the donor is open to doing so.
Weiner’s donor lives out of state and underwent surgery on the same day as Weiner, but elsewhere in the country. His kidney was then flown to the Manhattan hospital, where it was transplanted.
Weiner, a producer for CBS’s race and culture unit, was discharged Saturday. He’ll still be required to take several anti-rejection medications and keep a strict regimen of doctors’ visits.
But when he’s fully recovered, he hopes to travel with his family and “just enjoy life.”
“Did I ever have any doubt? No, I really didn’t,” he told the Post. “I just knew that I had to take it one day at a time.”
