SW-FL Radio: BJ Odom Returns After Kidney Transplant

B-J Odom

B.J. Odom is back on the air. But it’s not just a job for the radio personality.

It’s positively therapeutic, report the News-Press.

“I’m returning to my element,” Odom says. “This is going to be the best medicine I could have right now — interacting with listeners and just talking to people.”

Odom needs some good medicine after getting a kidney replacement in January. He says he’s still not at full capacity, but he feels well enough to work part-time at Class Country Twang WMYR 1410 am /  106.7 T-FM.

“I’m kinda putting my feet in the water,” says Odom, a Southwest Florida radio fixture for decades. “It’s getting me back on the air, and it’s letting me have some fun. And it’s letting the listeners have some fun.”

The Fort Myers resident returned to the airwaves Monday with his new morning show on Twang. He’ll be playing music and entertaining listeners 6-10 a.m. weekdays.

Twang program director Dave Logan says he wanted to hire Odom about 1 ½ years ago, when Twang first went on the air. But Odom was working for another local station at the time.

“Just listen to him!” Logan says. “He’s funny. He’s quick-witted. He just brings so much to the table.”

Odom, 60, has been on government disability for more than a year, thanks to his previous need for three or four hours of dialysis every day.

Odom’s kidney failure resulted from a heart transplant 11 years ago and the anti-rejection drugs he had to take afterward. He’d been on dialysis for more than a year when he got word in January that a harvested kidney was available.

“I feel a lot better now,” he says six months after that surgery. “I feel stable.”