Alex Pratt is the type of guy who never sees the glass half empty. It's always half full. This attitude has kept his spirits high as he has undergone the ordeal that is kidney disease.

But Alex is not unlike many of us: He's a dad who coaches his son's sporting events; he's a husband and a businessman. The difference is, he has had to manage his busy life around kidney disease for the last four years.

"I've been around the medical arena for a long time now, and at every juncture you just hold your breath and wait to see what the bottom line is going to be," says Pratt. "So I never get ahead of myself, or because I have some bad news, hold on to it and think this is all there is."

It helps that Alex is married to a nurse with 25 years of experience. He says she understands what he has to endure.

"I am in an extraordinary situation. It happens that my wife has been in dialysis as a nurse ... That's how I met her, when I was on dialysis."

Alex has also been fortunate to have had two successful kidney transplants when some wait for years and never get one.

"It's an interesting kind of contrasting thing," says Pratt. "On the one hand, you are not blessed to have kidney disease but on the other hand, you are blessed to be able to deal with it ... Part of it is a blessing and part of it is just sheer effort and the will to make things happen a certain way."

The multiple kidney procedure was a new twist for Alex, and he is grateful for those who so willingly participated in the surgeries.

Now that he's doing fine, he says he has time to focus on his real estate development business.

"There are all kinds of things I put on hold that now I am pursuing."