Mission kidney recipient and his donor march in Surrey Kidney Walk

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A unique duo is pounding the pavement at Surrey’s Holland Park Sunday, at one of the numerous Kidney Walks being held across the country.

31-year-old Geoff Dunsire of Mission desperately needed a kidney after a long history of illness. He’s already spent much of his life in hospital rooms, ending up in BC Children’s Hospital with liver failure at 13 and needing a liver transplant. At times it became so bad he had to spend months in hospital, even going into a coma and on life support for a time.

Dunsire recovered, but in 2013 he found out he needed a kidney transplant too.

“My journey’s been pretty crappy. I’ve been on dialysis for five-and-a-half years,” he says. “Dialysis sucks.”

After hearing Dunsire’s story, his realtor, Debi Pearce, stepped up to the plate to help.

RELATED: Mission man’s realtor offers up kidney for transplant

“My first thought was, ‘Oh that’s so sad.’ And I thought, ‘Well, if everybody just says that’s so sad then nobody’s ever going to get any help. Somebody needs to step up,'” she says. “His strength and determination and positive attitude just told me that I had to get on this trip with him, I just had to do it.”

Pearce says the two are going to be side-by-side at the walk Sunday morning.

“We’re sort of a partnership now and it’s only going to be a couple of weeks until he gets his actual transplant and no longer has to do dialysis,” she says. “It really feels like the first solid footstep that we’re taking together on this journey.”

Dunsire is hoping his life will finally get back to normal after the transplant.

“There’s no way to thank her, honestly,” he says. “It’s called the gift of life. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Pearce says the transplant surgery has been scheduled for June 19.