Former NBA star Nate Robinson received a kidney transplant nearly 20 years after he was diagnosed with kidney disease.
Robinson announced that was scheduled to have the procedure later that day in a Feb. 7 Instagram post.
In the caption, he reflected on the news, writing in part, “I’m here to celebrate and thank the LORD for all he has done in my life, today is the day I get my new kidney.”
“thank you to all the people that sent prayers and texted my phone giving me encouragement & love !!!” he continued. “ Ur a foo if you dnt believe in GOD and the miracles he performs !! Amen.”
After his surgery was complete, his mother, Renee Busch, gave an update about his health and current status to NBC affiliate KING 5. At the time, she said that he remained in the hospital while he was recovering from the procedure.
“It’s over, and now the best is yet to come,” she told the outlet.
Busch has been by her son’s side throughout his health journey after he was diagnosed with kidney disease in 2006, and announced publicly in 2022 that he had been undergoing treatment for renal kidney failure for four years.
“We didn’t know anything about it, it was new to us,” she said, reflecting on his diagnosis. “We just took it one day at a time. It was hard, and it was a journey, but we got through it.”
Busch said the surgery was “really big” for Robinson and the entire family, adding, “We’ve been blessed. I just know that God is real in my life and in his life, and we’ll have another story coming.”
Leading up to the surgery on Feb. 7, Robinson re-shared a series of supportive messages from his friends on his Instagram story marking the milestone moment in his health journey. He continued posting messages the day after his surgery on Feb. 8, celebrating the procedure’s success.
Robinson previously opened up to Men’s Health magazine in June 2024 about his health journey.
After his 2006 diagnosis, he was warned by doctors that the function of his kidneys was declining and they were likely to fail in his 30s. He told the magazine, “I felt like I was Superman. I never thought I would get sick.”
Robinson’s kidneys failed in 2018, leaving them to function at less than 15% of their optimal capacity. In 2020, after he caught COVID, he was hospitalized for a week, explaining that his “insides just... stopped working.”
“They told me I might as well start dialysis today,” he recalled the doctors saying. “‘Your kidneys are working too hard; they’re deteriorating as we speak. The only way you will walk out of here alive is if you start dialysis.’ It was the only thing I had left.”
Robinson said he was “so angry” and “so mean” when he started dialysis and for the first two years, he seldom left his house except to go to the kidney center outside of Seattle.
“Some days I didn’t want to leave the house; I just didn’t want to do dialysis no more,” he said. “Some days, I did wanna be here, and do this, until I find a kidney.”
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