BREMERTON, Wash. — A Bremerton woman is praying for a miracle as she battles a rare kidney disease.
Diagnosed with kidney disease in her early 20s, Emily Thatcher is one of around 100,000 people in the U.S. waiting for an organ transplant.
Most of them need a new kidney.
Because of her blood is highly sensitized, she needs to find a donor who’s a perfect match.
Thatcher now has to go through dialysis every other day.
“It's terrifying to know that my 4-year-old knows the word dialysis,” said Thatcher. "And for him to know which one is my hurt arm.”
According to transplant surgeon Dr. Stephen Rayhill with UW Medical Center, out more than 200 kidney transplants his department performs each year, fewer than half involve living donors.
"The benefits of a living donor is the outcome tends to be better than a deceased donor and often times you can a transplant right away or very soon,” said Rayhill.
To help increase the odds for his patients, UW is part of a "donor exchange program" that allows living donors, whose intended recipient is not a match, to give their organs to anyone in a national registry.
“This allows them to be essentially exposed to the whole country and find those rare donors that they can work with,” said Rayhill.
For Thatcher, her friends and family are doing their part to find her the perfect match.
The message to strangers: "Share the spare", when it comes to a kidney that can save someone's life.
‘If you are in good health and you feel it's your call to do, I would recommend investigating because it's more than just me that needs help,” said Thatcher.
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