The Ultimate Christmas Gift

Landon Riggs says he noticed something wrong with his health in his early twenties. "I started having health issues as I was about to finish college; had severe night sweats, vomiting, just not feeling like myself in general. And that's kind of what sparked the interest as to what was going on."

At the age of 31, Landon Riggs says he knows what it means to fight for your life.

He's been suffering from kidney failure for several years.

Landon says he goes to The Dialysis Center of Northwest Arkansas every other day just to keep his body functioning.

At the center he receives a treatment that takes several hours, but it's keeping him alive.

According to Landon, the dialysis is a painless process, but that doesn't make it easy. "It's a lot to take in. This is a real mental battle and a mental game is how I always say it. You have to be mentally strong to deal with this. Nobody wants to come sit in here for you know 4 hours every other day, but it also puts a lot of things into perspective."

His younger sister Chloe says Landon's illness is also tough on his loved ones. "It's also affected my family so much, just there's been like economic struggles, financial struggles with him and the pain. It's been very hard."

Knowing all of these issues prompted friend Grant Wise to do something. "I sent him a text and just said, 'hey I want to let you know I'm going to go get tested and see if we are a match.'"

Wise was, in fact, a match. On December 21-st he and Landon headed to The Mayo Clinic In Rochester, Minnesota, so Wise could donate a kidney in hopes of saving his friend's life.

Wise smiles as he says, "It will be a different Christmas for me. It just feels incredible. I've been all smiles ever since I got the approval because it's nice to know that this Christmas I was able to help someone." A fact not lost on Landon. "Ultimately There's no other gift you could give, I mean, it's the gift of life so pretty unbelievable."

But perhaps Chloe puts it best, "Thank you all so much for caring about Landon so much and my family and Merry Christmas."