Palm Beach County teacher asking for a miracle kidney donor
LAKE WORTH BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — While the coronavirus is impacting every aspect of the medical community, there are many people struggling with other medical emergencies.
Stacy Godfry, who lives in Lake Worth Beach, is one of more than 100,000 people in the nation who need a kidney transplant.
The 48-year-old underwent her first kidney transplant in 2013, generously donated to her by her brother-in-law. However, her body rejected the kidney several years later.
Since then, she's been in and out of the hospital getting dialysis three times a week.
"The nausea, the vomiting, the anxiety. We’ve lost two patients recently, so you can’t help but think is this going to be me? So that part is really hard," Godfry said.
Godfry says she gets pricked with needles 156 times a year from dialysis alone, but it's what's keeping her alive.
When she's not in the hospital, she's often weak and sleeping. Godfry's dream is to open a Living Donor branch in Palm Beach County to advocate for other kidney patients needing transplants when she's healthy again.
However, finding a match to make that happen won't be easy; her body has built up antibodies to ward off disease, only instead of helping her system, it makes finding a match extremely difficult. Godfry says out of 100 people, only one of them could be a potential match.
To make matters worse, because of her condition, she was forced to take a leave of absence from her job as a teacher with the Palm Beach County School District.
Godfry and her family have tried everything to find a donor, including creating T-shirts and car magnets asking for help.
Still, she's fighting.
"It's just been really hard," she said. "I hope that if anybody should call and want to donate, even if they're not a match for me, that maybe I can be helping somebody else.”
Godfry needs a hero.
To help, click here or send an email to livingkidneydonor@tgh.com.
