Health & Fitness
Daughter's Ultimate Gift Saves Mother's Life
Tethered to a dialysis machine, Curlean's spirit was sinking. Discover how her daughter's selfless kidney donation saved her life.
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Curlean Phillips, 70, felt her spirit sinking. After a 25-year battle with Lupus led to severe kidney problems, she found herself tied to a dialysis machine seven days a week. The grueling treatments took a major toll on her physical and mental well-being, forcing her to put her life—and much-anticipated travel plans—on hold.
When a kidney transplant emerged as her best hope, Curlean and her family turned to the trusted experts at Hackensack University Medical Center. There, they learned how a living donor could drastically reduce the agonizing three-to-five-year wait for a deceased donor organ. While Curlean insisted she couldn't ask anyone for such a sacrifice, her 41-year-old daughter, Chanda, had already made a courageous decision.
Michael J. Goldstein, M.D., Director of Organ Transplantation at Hackensack and Curlean's surgeon, emphasizes that living donation is a transformative act of generosity. To perform the donor removal, transplant surgeon Alexandra J. Erhardt, D.O., utilized a minimally invasive robotic-assisted technique on Chanda. Thanks to the advanced approaches of Dr. Erhardt and Dr. Goldstein, both mother and daughter had remarkably successful surgeries and quick recoveries.
Now completely free from dialysis, Curlean is finally planning those trips to Disney and Japan. But how did Chanda overcome her mother's initial refusal to accept the kidney? And how has this profound, life-saving gift changed the future for their entire family?
Click here to read Curlean and Chanda’s full, inspiring story.
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