Woman With Rare Organ Disease Pleads for New Kidney
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JACKSON, Tenn. — Seven years after being diagnosed with a rare kidney disease 46-year-old Rhonda Ewing feels like her pain will never end. “With me being on dialysis that’s cutting my life short 10 years at least so I want to live a longer life,” Ewing said. Ewing says the disease, Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis, attacks her kidneys filter system, causing toxins to spread throughout her body. In February 2014, Ewing started a search for a new organ. “Basically either I’m gonna be on dialysis for the rest of my life or I’m gonna get a new kidney so, I choose to get a new kidney,” Ewing said. However the story is different for Mary Thomas-Vickery, who lost her 27-year-old daughter Corri Renee Thomas in 2013, to an Arrhythmia. “There was electricity all the way around her heart but her heart wasn’t pumping,” said Thomas-Vickery. “I found her collapsed on the bathroom floor and she wasn’t breathing.” Thomas says thankfully Corri designated herself as an organ donor, granting someone a new liver, two kidneys and a pair of eyes. “Corri was in the hospital and it didn’t look like we were gonna be able to save her,” Thomas-Vickery said. “But I knew that somewhere somebody else was praying for their family member to make it.” Ewing says since starting dialysis in February shes dropped 60 pounds from her original weight. “I need a donor because I can’t use my immediate family,” Ewing said. “Because what I have is hereditary so I can’t use my children.” Ewing says the wait for a new kidney can last from six months to two years.
