Ryan Collins knows his life is like a ticking time bomb and without a new kidney he might not be around much longer.

Doctors have told the 29-year-old emergency medical technician he must have a new kidney to survive because the one he received from his dad, Rick, 22 years ago, is diseased and dying.

“Doctors have told me it could shut down any time now,” Collins said Wednesday from his Sanderfer Road home in Athens. “They say it is functioning now like a quarter of a dollar (25 percent). It’s about gone.”

Ryan, who works with an ambulance firm in Decatur, needs a kidney transplant such as the one he got from his father in 1984. That would not be a problem if his sisters, Jaime, 24, and Amber, 18, could give him theirs.

But doctors say that as the result of his earlier transplant from his father, his sisters are ruled out as desirable matches.

“They say his body has developed two types of DNA which rules out immediate family members,” said his father. “My daughters have been tested, but because he has my DNA and his DNA, it won’t work.”

The two types of DNA are fighting, causing his kidney to fail.

“I would give him mine if I could,” said his father, who is 49 and a corrections officer at the Limestone Correctional Facility. “But they say because of the DNA factor that can’t happen — that he needs a donor outside of our immediate family.”

Collins was born with the disease known as “prune belly syndrome,” which is a congenital absence or weakness of abdominal muscle.

A child with this disease typically is male with a thin or lax abdominal wall and a long and dilated prostatic urethra from prostatic hypoplasia. The condition can lead to kidney disease, as Ryan’s did.

“When he was born, he had no abdominal muscles,” said Rick Collins. “Doctors told us at the time it was one in a million that this could happen.

“When he was born they told us he would die or be a vegetable all his life and would never walk. But he beat the odds. When he received my kidney, they told us then that it would last only five years. But right now he is the longest living kidney transplant patient that UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital) has.”

Doctors say if Collins does not get a donor within two weeks they will have to put in a shunt for dialysis. The shunt would go in his arm or leg and he would have to go three times a week for dialysis, Ryan said.

“Right now, they say my kidney could shut down any time,” Collins said. “Yes, it’s on mind, but I feel like I need to work, and I’m still doing that. I enjoy being an EMT.”

He said the disease is leaving him with weakness and shortness of breath.

“I don’t want to go on dialysis if I can help it, because it breaks you down,” Collins said. “I’m just hoping to find a donor match.”

“It’s not like it was when I gave him my kidney,” his father said. “Back then, it was pretty serious surgery, but the technology has changed so much now that all they have to do is go in at the belly button and pull it right out. I was in the hospital for a week, but now they tell me you’re out in a day.”

UAB will perform the transplant. Anyone wishing to be placed on the donor list should telephone Donzetta Avery or Lucy Albritton at 1-888-822-7892.