Karen Reid, a retired teacher from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, is looking for a kidney donor.
Reid, who was diagnosed with a chronic kidney disease in 2014, recently published a letter asking for help finding a donor. Her disease has now progressed to stage four and her kidneys have lost 85 to 90 percent of their function.
She said she did not immediately begin looking for a kidney donor after her diagnosis, as she hoped to find ways to make her kidneys last longer and didn't know how to ask people.
But in 2019, after her condition worsened, she started her search with UNC Kidney Center and has been on UNC's active transplant waiting list since. The average wait time in North Carolina for a transplant is five to six years, so she said her doctors told her the best option would be to find a living donor.
Reid said when she finally accepted what was happening, she went to workshops on how to ask for a living donor. She's done fundraisers and letter writing campaigns with her family and friends.
“I’ve gotten a lot of support from my friends, family, former students, their parents — it’s really been a great blessing and outpouring of support from so many people,” Reid said. “It’s been really hard to ask or put that out there, but sometimes you just have to ask.”
One of Reid’s friends, Mae McLendon, helped her share a letter to the community about her kidney disease and her search for a donor. After reading the letter, Molly McConnell, one of McLendon's friends, decided to share it with WTVD because it spoke to her heart, even though she has never met Reid.
“I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought,” McConnell said. “This lady is suffering, she needs help, she needs publicity because getting somebody to donate a kidney is not easy.”
Reid said she is still in a waiting pattern now to see if some of the people who reached out about donating after seeing her letter qualify or match her.
