Sarah Loiselle

Steph V Needs A LIVING Kidney DONOR

Please help my best friend.

In March of this year, my best friend Steph's life turned upside down. A seemingly healthy woman was hospitalized for high blood pressure. Routine blood work showed that her kidneys were severely damaged. Follow-up appointments with a nephrologist and a kidney biopsy revealed that she had IgA nephropathy, also known as Berger’s disease. At some point she got a virus, and her immune response caused the otherwise normal IgA protein to build up on her kidneys which caused irreversible inflammation. This inflammation can go on for years with symptoms that may be difficult to notice.

As these last few months have passed with more follow-up appointments, and more blood work, her kidneys have deteriorated even more. As of August 9th, she was placed on the list for transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Although we are states away from each other, I am comforted to know that is where she has been receiving her medical care. A few years after we graduated from MSU, Steph moved to Baltimore with her now husband, Nate, who was starting a new job. They have happily called Maryland home for many years with Albert and Biscuit, their very loved dog and cat.

These last 5 months have been over whelming, frustrating, and emotional. Steph is the one person that knows all of me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. She is the friend I talk to about everything, the one I have gone to for the last 21 years. It has been hard for all of us that know her and care about her to really process what has happened and what she is now facing. I want many more healthy years for my friend, the one who’s seriously funny and wicked smart, the one who tells it like it is, the one who loves learning, reading, traveling, and most importantly laughing. The one I really cannot imagine life without.

What I am asking for now is your help. I have been a nurse for 13 years, but I am a novice in this arena. We are on the search for a living donor. The success rates are higher for those that receive a kidney from a living donor instead of deceased. This would allow her to live healthier years and have a better outcome overall. The truth is that she will most likely be on dialysis in the very near future, which is a life-altering and difficult medical treatment that she will have no choice but to undergo. This will impact her work, as a marketing and communications manager, and social time immensely.
The plan now is to inform others of her condition and ask that you share her story. Do you have any advice for us? Do you know of anyone close to you who has gone through a transplant? We would love all feedback and stories of any kind. We are inexperienced in all of this and figuring it out together.
Thank you for reading this and sharing her story. Please also consider registering to be an organ donor if you are not already.

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