Polk City father receives liver transplant thanks to surprise donor

POLK CITY, IA —

Throwing the football around the yard with his kids isn’t something Kyler Hess takes for granted. It’s these little moments that mean a lot to the Polk City father who is battling stage 4 colorectal cancer.

“When it came to giving us the odds, my wife immediately said no. We’re not going to put that in her head,” Kyler Hess said.

Kyler’s wife, Emilie, says the family has tried to maintain a positive attitude since receiving the diagnosis in July 2025.

“At this point, we would just be a statistic. It was, ‘Let’s have our own story and see what we can do from there,'” Emilie Hess said.

A scan revealed that the cancer had spread to Kyler’s liver with more than 15 tumors. The Hess family says doctors in Des Moines told them there wasn’t much they could do, so the family sought treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

“After a few months of treatment and nutritional changes and all the other things we did, things started to change and go down,” Kyler Hess said.

With the cancer under control, Kyler says doctors at Mayo Clinic told him he was eligible for a liver transplant, but it had to come from a living donor. The liver is made up of two lobes, and one lobe has the ability to grow and regenerate in another person.

Kyler’s brother immediately underwent extensive testing, but was unable to donate due to the anatomy of his liver.

“I felt bad for them, but then that’s when I felt like it was supposed to be me,” Abby Conley said.

Abby Conley didn’t know Kyler, but she followed his journey online because their children attend the same school in Polk City. Abby decided to take a leisurely trip to the Mayo Clinic to undergo three days of extensive testing to see if her liver was a match. She says she felt called to do it in honor of her father who died in 2021 while waiting for a bone marrow transplant after battling leukemia.

“When my dad was in his last days, he wrote a letter to his family and in that letter he said I lived a fairytale life…keep it up,” Abby Conley said.

Conley now hopes his donation will allow Kyler to spend many more years with his children.

“In order to continue to watch my children graduate, to walk my daughter down the aisle, to see all of life’s great moments with them in the years to come, I had to have that piece that I can’t do on my own,” Kyler said.

If you are interested in registering as an organ or tissue donor, you can visit the Iowa Donor Network website.

You can also support the Hess family here.

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