In 2016, retired father Lucious Daniels was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney failure at the age of 71. Doctors told Daniels that without a kidney transplant he had little chance of survival.
Good news! His daughter Dawn Muhammad’s blood type was compatible with her father’s.
But the good news was only short-lived because there was one problem: Doctors told her she weighed too much and would not be able to donate to her father. That hit home for Muhammad. Not being able to give back to the man, the hero, who did so much for her growing up. She knew she had to do something.
After hearing the news, Muhammad said she “cried.”
“He is my superhero, he is the man I have looked up to all my life,” Muhammad told “Good Morning America. “He has sacrificed a lot for our family, a lot,” she added.
“I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, ‘Let’s try this, let’s try this, let’s really try and commit to it,'” Muhammad said. “We told my father, ‘This isn’t the end, this can’t be the end, we have got to find a moment to help.'”
So, she quietly hired a personal trainer, changed her eating habits, and went on a 13-month journey to lose weight and lost 55 pounds.
Muhammad said she broke down in tears when she finally reached her goal and broke the news to her father.
“I said, ‘Dad … can I tell you a secret? I have been losing this weight not just for me, but for you!'” she recalled. “‘This weight loss has been for you, I need you to give me that paperwork, I need to be that donor for you.'”
“Anytime I felt myself about to eat the wrong food, I reminded myself of that goal and I have that picture in my…
… mind of my dad. playing baseball, golfing, you know, living his life as he had always been living it – very active,” says Dawn Muhammad.
The transplant is scheduled for a week from Friday.
“Dawn’s mother wasn’t able to come home for a few weeks after Dawn was born,” remembers Daniels. “So I decided to bring her home myself and we created a bond that lasted for a lifetime.”
Muhammad said she has a message for other potential organ donors.
“Just do it,” she said. “It’s a selfless act. It’s an act of love, not an act of sacrifice…I was blessed enough to help my father and I’m praying that someone else can do the same for their loved one.”
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