Edmonton couple part of kidney donation chain helping change lives

Local woman joins national kidney program An Edmonton woman with Stage 5 kidney disease is waiting for a transplant after joining the kidney paired program. Jessica Robb reports.

An Edmonton woman and her boyfriend have paired up to start a chain reaction of kidney donations.

Since she was 10 years old, Elida Knight has known that a kidney transplant was in the cards for her after being diagnosed with reflux nephropathy. It's a rare degenerative condition that affects one to three per cent of children globally.

"Even when I was 10 years old, I only had 60 per cent kidney function," she told CTV News Edmonton. "So that was already the function of a [normal] 60-year-old."

She has Stage 5 kidney disease today, with hers functioning at around eight per cent. For 12 hours a week, she relies on a dialysis machine to filter her blood.

"It's manageable," she said, "but I'd love a kidney."

"It would obviously be much nicer and improve my quality of life drastically to not do [dialysis] for 12 hours each week, plus setting it up and cleaning it."

Her boyfriend, Jonathan Fraczek, is an incompatible kidney transplant.

"I felt very helpless and hopeless simultaneously when there was that thought in the back of my head that there's a very real possibility that I can't do anything about this," Fraczek said.

But thanks to a national donation program, he can offer one of his kidneys to a different person, and in return, a stranger matching with Knight will give her one.

Going through the normal donation waitlist could take years of waiting, Knight shared.

A year and a half after joining the program, Knight got the call that she and Fraczek were part of a donation chain.

The couple is cautiously optimistic this time that it will happen, having had one fall through previously.

"[This time] I'm not gonna believe that I'm getting a transplant until there's a new kidney in my body and I'm waking up," Knight said.

The Canadian Blood Services paired kidney donation program started in 2009 and has facilitated 970 transplants, including 103 in Alberta.

"Any healthy adult can be assessed for living donation," explained Darlene Jagusic, the donation program's manager.

Every three months, the program runs a matching cycle nationally to see if any of the transplant volunteers can facilitate a life-changing exchange.

"I think the best thing people can do is to arm themselves with some information," she added, "and see if it's something that might be right for you."

All donations and their pairings are anonymous unless both parties agree to share their info with each other a few years after the transplant.