Woman seeks living donor for 2nd kidney transplant

KOIN 5 | Amy Frazier

Alysia Yamasaki needs a kidney and is trying to educate people about living donations

Alysia Yamasaki began a website to both educate people about kidney disease and becoming a living donor, January 23, 2017 (KOIN)

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Alysia Yamasaki has travelled the world, went to and graduated from college and now works for Head Start. The 28-year-old Southeast Portland resident said she’s especially grateful for one person.

“At 10 I had a life-saving kidney transplant from a non-living donor,” Alysia told KOIN 6 News. “It means the world to me. I wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for an organ donor.”

But now, nearly two decades later, that kidney is failing and she needs to have another transplant. So she’s taking the time to tell her story to encourage people to become living donor.

When she was 8, she began not feeling well. A biopsy revealed she suffers from a rare auto-immune disease, microscopic polyangitis. At 9, she began dialysis, and at 10 she had a transplant from a deceased donor. Continue reading

from Donate Life Organ and Tissue Donation Blog℠ http://ift.tt/2jLqox3