Three months before our wedding, my husband Richard was diagnosed with stage 5 kidney failure. He was only 34 years old. A young dad, a former college athlete, someone who had always faced lupus and chronic kidney disease with grit and determination. But by 2018, dialysis became his only hope for survival.
For nearly a year and a half, Richard woke before dawn to be in his dialysis chair by 5 a.m. He endured four long hours of treatment, then went straight to work. By the time he got home, he was drained and often asleep by 6 p.m. Dialysis was keeping him alive, but he wasn’t really living.
When you see someone you love hurting, all you want to do is help.
I wanted to donate a kidney to Richard, but after testing, we learned I wasn’t a match. At the Advent Health Transplant Institute in Orlando, we were told that the wait for a kidney transplant would likely be three to five years, maybe longer. For a young father with so much life, we were determined to find another option.