Kate Hackett
I honestly do not even know where to START with this story. This poor woman! This awful dude.
TikToker Colleen Le shared a video recently about how excited she was that her boyfriend got a second chance to live after she gave him her kidney.
Plot twist: he then cheated on her.
The video has nearly ten million views and three million likes. The comments are horrified (same) and supportive (also same).
BuzzFeed chatted with Colleen, who is a 30-year-old account exec in Yorba Linda, CA. She told them that she met her now-ex in 2015 and donated her kidney after dating him for just a few months.
“At the time we met, he was already going through peritoneal dialysis, which meant his kidney function was already at less than 5%, so I felt like it was urgent and he needed a kidney as soon as possible,” she explained.
She did clarify that this was her choice. “He didn’t technically ask me for a kidney but pretty much opened the door for me to get tested.” He was also clear about his condition and how to go about finding out if she was a match.
She decided to donate her kidney because “I saw how his day-to-day was and how much he was struggling health-wise so that already convinced me to want to help him the best way I can.”
For a while, she said the relationship was fine until about seven months after her operation. He came to her home after a bachelor party to let her know that he had cheated on her.
“My initial reaction was hurt and betrayal. He was a hardcore Christian and always stuck to his morals throughout our relationship, so it definitely shocked me that he would betray me like that after everything I’ve done for him. I felt incredibly backstabbed and taken advantage of.”
She did try to give him another chance, but her “trust in him was completely shattered.”
When she and the ex were arguing on the phone, he decided that he wanted to stop talking and read the Bible together. She said, “I told him, ‘No, can we just talk it out?’ That right there triggered him so much that he just pretty much broke up with me and said, ‘If God wanted us to be together, then we’ll find a way back together in the end.'”
At that point, he hung up on her and blocked her everywhere.
“I really thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him and loved him so much that I saved his life. Just the fact that he cut ties with me so easily and made me feel like I never existed in his life was really hard to get over,” Colleen said.
After two months of silence, he reached out to grab lunch for the year anniversary of her donation. “I didn’t respond because I felt like he only reached out to me over guilt.”
However, she does not regret giving him her kidney. “Despite the outcome of everything, I still wouldn’t take back saving his life.”
“I didn’t think it was going to get viral the way it did. Most of the responses to the video were really positive, heartfelt, and sweet, and some have said that it gave them hope. It feels amazing to know that my videos are giving them hope and having them believe that despite all the hurt, everything will be okay in the end.”
