PA/NJ’s Featured Kidney Story

My handsome, athletic, and all-around good guy husband got a very bad case of the flu that went into pneumonia. He went to an urgent care facility as he did not have a primary care doctor and was rarely ill. His blood pressure was off the charts, and he was rushed to the emergency room of the closest hospital. He was in the hospital for several weeks before his blood pressure could be somewhat regulated. He was also diagnosed with kidney disease and was told he was a candidate for a transplant.

Abe is the only child of sole survivors of the Holocaust and there were no living relatives other than his parents. This eliminated him from getting a transplant from relatives. My parents were both Type 2 diabetics, so my family was also eliminated from the pool. It was time to be proactive. I started a Facebook page that had thousands of followers, created fliers to distribute at various places and joined NKF. We did our first NKF walk in NYC, we now do the NJ walk and have had the pleasure of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. joining us. He is a kidney patient and a true friend of our community. The experiences were exhilarating and made us feel an immediate bond with other renal patients.

I was asked to become a Kidney Advocate and pre-pandemic met with members of Congress to get renal friendly bills passed. Abe got a transplant in 2016 from an altruistic donor. We both feel the need to give back and work tirelessly for those who suffer from renal disease.