A Calgary family in desperate need to save their wife and mother have turned to the public for help. As a last resort, they’ve put up a billboard hoping to find a kidney donor.
Alice Pesta has lived with kidney problems most of her life. Having suffered with strep throat when she was 11, she contracted IgA nephropathy. The disease builds up antibodies in the kidneys which can cause inflammation and potential kidney failure.
Alice’s kidney failure was first detected when she was 27 and she began dialysis treatment. “At 29, I had my first kidney transplant, her name was Lucy,” Alice says.
Lucy, the donated kidney, remained viable for 25 years. However, it too became damaged by Alice’s IgA. The complexities of Alice’s condition mean she is not suitable for a cadaver organ donation; a living donor is necessary. Despite having AB blood, Alice’s family and children are not matches for donation. However, her husband, Lou Pesta, was able to exchange his kidney for Alice to receive one.
“It wasn’t a direct kidney transplant to my wife,” says Lou, “I was approved to donate a kidney, but I wasn’t a perfect match for Alice. So, there’s a pair exchange program, where through the kidney transplant department, they will find a couple or maybe more people. But they found a match for Alice and that family member was able to donate to her and then I donated to the other family member.
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“We don’t know who that was, it’s all kept confidential. But we basically had surgeries one day apart.”
Despite the transplant, further complications landed Alice back on dialysis in 2020 to treat kidney failure. At the same time, Alice was diagnosed with cancer. Having undergone treatment for cancer and getting the all-clear, the timing is now critical for another transplant.
Dr. Nairne Scott-Douglas, a nephrologist and associate professor at the Cumming School of Medicine, first met Alice when he was still a trainee. Since then, he’s watched her health climb and decline through the years of dealing with IgA.
He explains a factor why it is so difficult to find a match for Alice is because she is sensitized due to previous transplants.
“As you have more transplants, you are more likely to be sensitized,” he says. “Alice has 90-per cent sensitivity against other people. So, if you took 100 people, there would only be 10 she wouldn’t have antibodies against, so it really limits her ability to get another donor.”
“It’s a little unfair,” he adds, “Because if she was 95-per cent sensitized there would be a Canada-wide search for highly sensitized people.”
Against her one-in-10 odds, Alice remains hopeful she will find a match.
“The glass is always half full,” she says. “I trust humanity.”
More information about Alice can be found at kidney4alice.life.
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