A Daughter’s Gift to Her Mother Saves Two Lives

Just 42 years old, Erosalyn Deveza was drifting toward death. Her kidneys were barely functioning. She was constantly exhausted. She had vertigo and vomited frequently. She was tethered to a home dialysis machine for eight hours each night as she slept. A kidney transplant was the only thing that could save her, but it was unlikely to happen in time in the United States. No one on Deveza’s side of the family could provide an organ through a living donation, doctors said, because all were at risk for the same kidney disease. It was too dangerous to leave any of them with a single kidney. Other family and friends were not a match.

This is a story of a daughter’s answer to her mother’s illness, an idea so obvious yet so inventive that it had never happened before, and hasn’t since.