MIAMI – A 21-year-old woman and her family are searching for a kidney donor to help save her life.
In January 2015, Emma Garcia de Paredes celebrated the gift of life after receiving a second kidney transplant at just 13 years old.
Garcia de Paredes became the first child in Florida to be part of a three-way paired kidney exchange transplant at the Miami Transplant Institute at the University of Miami’s Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
Garcia de Paredes is now studying criminal justice at Florida International University and wants to live a normal life, but has had her share of struggles.
“You don’t know what’s going on, you just feel sick,” she said.
After receiving her kidney eight years ago, doctors told Garcia de Paredes the new transplant had created additional medical problems.
“They sat me down and told me my creatinine had spiked to about a level 8, which is pretty bad,” she said.
Garcia de Paredes was born with a congenital condition called ureteropelvic junction (UPJ) obstruction, a blockage to the flow of urine from the kidney.
After receiving dialysis at just 1 month old and a transplant as a toddler that her body later rejected, Garcia de Paredes needed another kidney when she was 13.
“It was really emotional for me,” she said. " I don’t think I would have done it without my family.”
Garcia de Paredes’s mother had previously donated her kidney to her for her first transplant, so this time around, she didn’t have a kidney to spare to save her daughter.
“We were at a loss -- we didn’t know what to do with all this information,” said Maria Garcia de Paredes, Emma’s mother. “You feel powerless and you need to help your child you do whatever you can.”
Carlos Garcia de Paredes, Emma’s father, didn’t have the correct blood type to donate to her, but he was a match for someone else.
“No brainer. I was ready for it,” he said.
After running out of options, doctors suggested a rare three-way kidney exchange transplant.
“I remember the day when we first realized there was a possibility to find this match on the paired exchange. And at the time, we were trying to manage the antibody levels in her body, and it was proving to be very difficult. And this needle in a haystack, so to speak, came through and we all came together to try and see how the pieces fit together, and she was incredibly lucky that it did,” said Dr. Chryso Pefkaros Katsoufis, medical director of pediatric dialysis.
A team of transplant surgeons, nurses and other medical staff occupied six operating rooms at Jackson Memorial Hospital, performing three lifesaving transplants at the same time. Each procedure was a success.
“Every recipient gets a compatible donor from this program,” said Dr. Jayanthi Chandar, a pediatric nephrologist at Holtz Children’s Hospital. “It’s very unique because it gives a chance for recipients to get a good living donor and then they don’t have to wait too long on the waiting list.”
While it was just getting off the ground when Emma Garcia de Paredes had her transplant, Chandar told Local 10 News that three and even four-way paired donor exchanges are taking off in clinics everywhere, leading to better patient outcomes.
Garcia de Paredes says she hopes her story inspires others to become living donors.
“It’s a second chance at life. It needs to come out of a place of kindness,” she said. “It’s a very big decision and even though I have a bias, I understand that it’s an incredibly tough choice to make.”
Garcia de Paredes told Local 10 News that after graduation, she has plans to become an attorney so she can advocate for other transplant patients.
To hear more about Garcia de Paredes’s story and to help her find a donor, click here.
For more information on how to become a donor, click here.
