Billboard Seeks Kidney for Hartland Grandmother

With his mother’s health rapidly deteriorating, Jerry Millen is a son on a mission.

On Monday, a billboard featuring Virginia Millen, 73, of Hartland, along with three of her grandchildren, was put on display along I-75 in Madison Heights asking for the public’s help in finding the Hartland grandmother a kidney. It will stay up for one week.

It’s an advertising idea with two goals, according to Millen, who hopes that during the week the billboard is displayed, it will not only help save his mother’s life, but also bring awareness to the cause. 

“Yes, my mother needs a kidney desperately and I will do whatever it takes to get her one,” Millen said. “But two, I don’t think people understand about kidney donation and you can donate a kidney and be completely fine.”

After years of slow progressive kidney failure, Virgina Millen will have to begin kidney dialysis very soon and although the family never spoke of her health issues before, Millen said the time has come where it’s “getting to be life or death.”

“I was going to stand on the corner with a sign and my son if that’s what it took,” he said. “But the billboard will generate a certain amount of interest and we’ll find a kidney for her because I don’t quit. …But I think also it might help other people who are looking for kidneys.”

His determination and efforts come as no surprise to his mother, according to Millen.

“She knows me,” he said laughing. “I’m kind of go-getter in the sense that when I focus on something I get it done.”

Millen also possess an unwavering faith his mother will get her life-saving kidney from an “altruistic person” who wants to help and says that already the family has been contacted by potential donors.

“I have to tell them honestly though,” he said “they’re (doctors are) going to cut you open and they’re going to take the kidney if you decide to go through with this and you have to understand all of that before you even consider it.”

There is no cost to the donor and Millen says anyone who donates a kidney now and later on in life finds out they are need of one automatically goes to the top of the list “because you paid it forward.”

And even though Millen isn’t a match for his own mother, he and his brother are still part of a national Paired Program kidney registry that is designed to create a “domino effect” of helping several people receive kidneys with the hope of still being able to help their own mother.

“Because you only have one mom,” he said.

For more information, call 1-855-94-GRAMS or email at saveourgrandma@gmail.com