By Erin Wise
Thousands of people in Alabama have kidney failure and many are in need of kidney transplants, but the number of patients greatly outnumber available kidneys. Many have taken to social media to find a living donor.
Annitra McGowan was diagnosed with stage three kidney disease four years ago. Her health declined further after getting COVID-19 in 2021. Read more from ABC 33/40 News.
By Laura Williamson
Melanie Wickersheim has no memory of the first time her heart gave her trouble. She was an infant, and her pediatric myocarditis – an inflammation of the muscular walls of the heart – resolved before she was old enough to know anything had ever been wrong.
She spent the first 10 years of her life like any other kid in Los Angeles, believing she was perfectly healthy. Until suddenly, she wasn’t. She couldn’t hold down food. She felt so weak, she could barely walk. “I remember trying to walk across a parking lot. I had to stop at every light pole to take a breath, panting for air,” she said. Read the story in American Heart Association News.
By Stephanie Stahl
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A Delaware musician has a new lease on life after a kidney transplant. It was an operation that involved a robot and social media.
This was a living donor transplant from a connection made on Facebook. It was performed at Penn Medicine with the help of a robot for the first time. Read more from CBS News Philadelphia.
By Kelly Morgan
Two families have met for the first time after a Salisbury man received a double lung transplant.
Stephen Henstridge, 66, received Michele Sephton’s lungs in September 2019 after she died in a car crash.
At the time of the transplant Mr Henstridge had only weeks to live as he battled the terminal condition idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Read the full story in BBC News.
Ryan Scoble thought he had the flu. He soon learned he was in heart failure and needed a transplant. Still, he hoped to return to the lacrosse field.
By Meghan Holohan
Two years ago, Ryan Scoble was playing lacrosse when he felt short of breath and fatigued. He wondered if he had the flu.
“I was struggling in warmups. I got in late in the third quarter,” the 23-year-old lacrosse long stick middie from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, told TODAY’s Harry Smith. “I was struggling to make plays and even really stand up.”
Read the full story on Today.
By Rose Conlon
OLATHE, Kansas — Last year, Gary Gray’s liver disease got so bad that it began poisoning his mind, sucking him into imaginary conversations with people who weren’t there.
At one point, he became convinced that his family had turned their home into a commercial haunted house. Check out the full story on NPR.
By Gabriel Spitzer, Emily Kwong, Rebecca Ramirez, Liz Metzger
In February 2021, pandemic restrictions were just starting to ease in Hawaii, and Leila Mirhaydari was finally able to see her kidney doctor. This was a huge relief after being unable to get in-person health care for so long. But Leila was also anxious: Transplanted organs need diligent care, and Leila had been looking after her donated kidney all on her own for a year. So a lot was riding on that first batch of lab results. Read or listen the to the full story on NPR.
By Kevin Longino
I know what it is like to experience kidney failure and, thankfully, I am one of the fortunate few to receive a kidney transplant.
As the CEO of the National Kidney Foundation, I lead with a sense of urgency because I know how challenging life can be for patients living on dialysis and waiting to get their life back.
Read the full article in Healio.
By Lynn Nichols
When Hazel Cunanan, a home health nurse, got the call that her 15-year-old son, Markus, needed a kidney transplant, she broke down. It was simply too much. The family had already endured a kidney transplant for their eldest daughter, Danica.
“I sat with my patient and I cried and cried,” Hazel says. “But it ended up being much easier the second time around. We knew what to expect, we were stronger. And we already had a community at the hospital and at home to help us.”
Read the full story in Stanford Medicine Childrens Health Healthier, Happier Lives Blog.
Meredith Stiehl received a partial-liver transplant from her daughter Kenan, the first-ever living donor procedure at UNC Hospitals to be conducted in twenty years. Chirag Desai, MD, FACS, led the care team that performed the procedure.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The bond between a mother and daughter is quite special. This is particularly true for Meredith Stiehl, 57, who recently received a liver transplant from her 26-year-old daughter, Kenan Stiehl, to treat life-threatening liver disease.
Read more from the UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine Newsroom.