By Sawyer D’Argonne Heidi Hughes is on the road to recovery, and she’s feeling like a completely different person.
Hughes, a long-time Breckenridge resident, has spent the last decade combatting serious kidney failure with less than 20 percent function in her one working kidney. But all of that changed last month when David Blair, a firefighter in Florida, decided to donate a kidney to Hughes, a complete stranger.
While complications arose following the somewhat untraditional procedure, the surgery was successful and both Hughes and Blair are on the mend.
“That there was a stranger that was willing to put his life on hold and donate part of his body to somebody he’s never even met is just so amazing,” said Hughes of Blair’s donation. “It’s just a wonderful feeling knowing that there’s people like that out there in this world.”
Hughes, a Florida native, was born with a rare genetic disease called cystinosis, a condition characterized by the accumulation of cystine crystals within cells. The buildup can have severe and far reaching effects on the body, causing problems in a variety of organs and tissues, though the kidneys are often the most vulnerable.
Hughes had her first kidney transplant at the National Institutes of …read more
Via:: Summit Daily