My wife Alice has been challenged with kidney disease almost her entire life. Her kidney function started to decline in her teens after a strep throat infection was not treated promptly. She received her first kidney transplant while still in her twenties. That kidney worked well for over two decades but eventually Alice had to go back on dialysis. Roughly ten years ago I donated a kidney on the paired exchange program to secure another kidney transplant for Alice. The second transplant did not go well and within just a few years Alice had to return to dialysis in October of 2020 at the same time that she was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. After undergoing cancer surgery and radiation therapy she almost died from a massive infection of her blood in January of 2021. She became unresponsive and only a final Hail Mary experimental antibiotic brought her back to life. To say that Alice is a fighter would be an understatement.

After being declared cancer free and passing a multitude of tests she was cleared for another transplant and placed on the cadaver transplant list in early 2024. We thought that the wait for a cadaver transplant would be short given that with AB blood she is a universal recipient (she can receive a kidney from any blood type donor). We have subsequently learned, however, that on the cadaver waiting lists she will only be eligible to receive an AB kidney, which is very rare. Any kidneys received from other blood type donors are reserved for recipients who have those specific blood types. In addition, with the prior transplants and transfusions that Alice had the matching becomes more complicated due to the antibodies that she has in her system with only one in roughly eight potential donors being suitable.  As a result, a living donor is her most viable option.  All of our immediate family members and a number of other individuals in our network were tested and unfortunately ruled out as suitable donors.  That’s why we are reaching out to the broader population. 

After five years on dialysis Alice is getting progressively weaker and has started to encounter medical complications, often requiring hospital stays and intervention.  Her window of opportunity for kidney surgery is slowly closing and finding a suitable donor has become urgent.