A Ledyard High student who is waiting for a kidney is still active
The last few months of high school can give students and their families many things to worry about - college applications, final exams, saying goodbye to childhood friends and routines - but for 17-year-old Laura Seckley, a senior at Ledyard High School, the next six months is the time she has to find a living kidney donor in order to avoid dialysis.
Laura has been living with kidney disease since she was born, the result of being cut off from oxygen during birth. Over the past 17 years, she has been able to manage the disease through medication and a diet known as the strictest diet in medicine. Since she was a child, Laura has had to put an extreme limit on her intake of sodium, potassium and phosphorus. Recently she has had to place similar limits on protein.
These steps had been helping to delay the inevitable, and while she is not yet in kidney failure, Laura's doctors have told her that she needs a new kidney. If she does not find one, she will have to be put on dialysis - a physically draining treatment to clean the blood of waste and excess water normally cleared by a healthy kidney - at a time when she should be attending senior prom and walking with her class at graduation.
Laura'a family and friends have been getting the word out over social media and through fundraisers. They've started a page called Find A Kidney For Laura which has been sent out to over 2,000 people. The page asks people to contact Yale-New Haven Hospital's transplant referral line coordinator at 1 (866) 925-3897 in order to determine whether or not they might be a match. Laura's blood type is O positive, meaning she can accept kidney donations from people with Type O but those with other blood types who are interested in donating can participate in a paired exchange program that would allow Laura to be matched with a viable donor more quickly.
Family and friends will be holding a fundraiser to help cover expenses related to the transplant on March 2 from 4-9 p.m. at Valentino's Restaurant in Ledyard. Valentino's will donate 10 percent of all sales for both eat in and take out when customers specify that they are supporting Laura's fundraiser.
Laura has also been put on a list to receive a cadaver donor which will last 7 to 8 years until she would need another transplant. A living donor lasts twice as long, giving Laura 15 years before she would need another transplant.
Laura' mother, Christie Seckley, said that a living donor is the best option for her daughter, who she has seen change recently as her situation has gotten worse.
"She's always been energetic and hyper but it's quite apparent these days that she's been sleepier," Seckley said. "Over the last couple of years the poison level in her blood has been very slowly rising. For somebody her age who has so much of her life that's about to happen, she should have the longest lasting, healthiest kidney that we can find."
As for the transplant and the possibility of dialysis, Seckley said that Laura doesn't dwell on the possibilities, choosing instead to act like a high school student.
"She doesn't talk about it much, which worries me sometimes, but she has told me that she doesn't really care what happens as long as she gets to go prom and graduation," Seckley laughed.
Laura said will all the publicity and Facebook attention about her need for a donor, her friends have been asking her more about her health. She said that while she does think about the transplant and the possibility of dialysis, she isn't always nervous because she knows what's important.
"It's been a little tricky because the kidney has always been a concern," said Laura, who has grown up more aware about what she can and cannot eat than her peers without kidney troubles. "It kind of goes back and forth. I do want to be able to do these things but my health comes first."
J.HOPPER@THEDAY.COM
TWITTER:@JESSHOPPA
Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.