Gloria Fontanilla
Organ Recipient
At 19, the age when normal, healthy people are supposed to be living out their lives to the fullest without any sort of obstruction to their health or well being, Gloria went into renal failure. Her kidneys shut down and could not filter wastes and extra water out of her blood on their own. After several hospital stays and visits from various doctors, it was decided that she was going to be put on dialysis. A catheter was inserted into her left arm so that when she was hooked up to the machines at the dialysis center, her blood would travel through one tube into a machine where it would clean and filter it, and into the second tube where the clean blood would go back inside of her body. This process would take 4 hours confined to a medical chair. Little did she know that she would have to endure it for five years before she would receive a kidney from a donor that was her sister.
Melanie Stoev
Organ Donor
After finding out her sister, Gloria, was sick and needed a kidney transplant, Melanie immediately accepted to donate her kidney. When Gloria asked her if she could be her donor, Melanie responded with a simple 'when and where.' There was no hesitation in her voice, Melanie would do anything for her little sister. When she went to get tested to even see if she was a match for her sister, she found out that the two of them had the exact same five genes, making her a perfect match. It was almost as if it was meant to be. The operation was in the green, but it did not take place for over a year and had to be postponed on three different occasions. The first two were due to sickness and the third was because she needed time to settle into her new job before she could take a month off for recuperation from the surgery. The transplant that was supposed to be in 1993 was finally done on August 10, 1994. Melanie was 27 and Gloria was 25. She has never regretted her decision and is so happy that she did it.
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