Can You Help Kelli?

This post is a departure from my usual yammering about my daily life, Sunday Dinners and recipes, but it's something I feel led and honored to do. I want to do my part to help KELLI find a living kidney donor.

My friend KELLI@LIVING IN GRACE needs a kidney transplant as soon as possible. Her general health continues to decline even as the time she spends in dialysis increases. Kelli has undergone countless tests and procedures to arrive where she is today - ready to begin testing to find a suitable match for a living donor.

You can read about Kelli's journey HERE ON HER BLOG. But right now, she needs our help to find the best match possible to give her the best chance for a successful kidney transplant.

Kelli says it much better than I can, so I'm copying her words here:

Thank you for offering to be a part of the call for living kidney donors, and to help with our fundraising efforts. It is a true blessing for this family, and we love you all.

Here is the basic info on being a living kidney donor and the process. Feel free to put it out in whatever way you see fit, letting me know if you need further info or anything.

1) I will be listed with OHSU in Portland, OR. If someone is interested, they should contact us at jkbach@comcast.net and we will get them the contact info they need.

2) Because of some complications, I will most likely not be able to use a cadaver donor, although I have been listed with another hospital on the UNOS list for 3 years.

3) I will need a donor with the A or O blood type. If you don't know your blood type, they will have you get tested.

4) All medical costs are billed directly back to OHSU where my insurance covers 100% of all incurred costs. This allows the donor candidate to have all testing up to the end done at their local hospital or Dr. office at no charge to them.

5) Pre-screening involves an over the phone health questionnaire, then a simple blood test where my blood and theirs are combined and cross-matched. If that is okay, then they will have a series of tests done locally to them and billed directly to my insurance.

6) All this will lead up to a scheduled date for everyone to meet in Portland for transplant. The process, from the time a suitable candidate is found, is about 3 months to the actual surgery.

7) Fund raising is currently under way for all costs not covered by insurance (all non-medical). This includes things like travel and lodging for the donor, my housing and support for the month or more I am required to stay in Portland after surgery, etc.

We are going to be using giveitforward.org for the fund raising efforts.

The fundraiser is located at:

http://www.giveforward.org/kidney4kelli/


Thank you again everyone, and please let me know if I can give you more information.

Kelli

If you think you would be willing to undergo the tests to see if you are a match for Kelli, please contact her via email at: forkelli@gmail.com or jkbach@comcast.net.

If you would like to donate money to help with her expenses that are not covered by insurance, contact her via the email addresses listed above or by visiting her fund raising site:
http://www.giveforward.org/kidney4kelli/

Kelli also covets your continued and fervent prayers on behalf of her and her family as they move forward in their transplant journey.

On Kelli's behalf, thank you for reading, dear family and friends.On a completely unrelated note, I need to let everyone know that we're currently under a Winter storm warning through Saturday night. We're forecast to get freezing rain, sleet and up to a foot of snow, starting sometime tonight (Thursday).

This comes only a day after the one year anniversary of the devastating ice storm we experienced a year ago and I'm praying and hoping we don't have a repeat of that. Only time will tell, but I wanted to let my readers know just in case our power goes off for an extended period and I'm not able to get online and access my blog and Facebook.

The weather geeks think most of the ice will be South of us here in Northeast Arkansas, but we all know how tricky these forecasts tend to be and how unpredictable the weather can be.

Even a few inches of snow can incapacitate us here because we're not equipped with the road clearing gear that our more northerly neighbors have, and a foot of snow is an almost unheard of phenomenon in our area.

I foresee lots of rednecks in 4-wheel drive trucks with blades on them, out doing their part to just generally get in the way of progress. That's our version of snowplows you see, which are virtually nonexistent this far South.

Snow I can deal with, as long as the power stays on. As I've said before, our apartment is all electric, so when the power goes off we have no heat, no way to cook, no lights, no hot water, and so on and so forth, amen.

Assuming we still have electricity, I'll be back on Saturday with another scintillating Sunday Dinner post. In the meantime, y'all stay warm and safe, and God bless you.