I was eleven years old and didn’t understand that the word “Lupus” meant that my life would forever be altered. By the time I was thirteen, I understood that Lupus wasn’t just a crazy sounding word, but a mean and relentless disease that keeps gnawing and digging at its victim until it gets what it wants. In my case, it wanted my kidneys and my kidneys got it. Between the ages of eleven and eighteen, I was hospitalized too many times to count with a wide range of problems that all stemmed from Lupus. I had asthma quite frequently between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, seizures at seventeen and kidney failure at eighteen. I had known since the age of thirteen that my kidneys were suffering and swore that I would rather die than become a dialysis patient, but when faced with the choice, I chose life. Dialysis was defiantly hard to adjust to at the beginning, but I slowly accepted it.  I looked at all the people that I loved and knew that they needed me to live, so I fought even more to regain my strength. School was very hard for me at the beginning of my kidney failure. I was on peritoneal dialysis and dialyzed four times a day, which meant that instead of going to lunch , I was doing my mid day dialysis treatment in the nurses office. I eventually left school with out my high school diploma. After four years of peritoneal dialysis, I started Hemodialysis. It would take me ten years of starting and stopping school before I would receive my GED.  During the first eight years, I helped to take care of my older brother who had suffered a head injury. After his death, I realized that having life and living live were two very different things I wanted both. I received my GED and enrolled in college. Everyone thought that I would quit, but I fought harder to prove everyone, including myself, that I could do it. I wanted to become a nurse and nothing was going to stop me. I have been in college since August 2003 and will graduate in May 2009 as a Registered Nurse. I have never felt as proud of myself as I do now. Not only am I well on my way to achieving my goals, but I will be able to encourage others to live and reach their dreams, never letting obstacles stop them, but learning to find ways around them. I am now thirty-three years old and have been on dialysis for fifteen years. I am at the top of the kidney transplant list and waiting for the gift of life; a gift that is so precious to the recipient and donor family. It’s an unbelievable miracle that out of someone’s tragedy, the family finds strength to save a strangers life and it’s something that I could never find the words to express how much it means to people like me. I plan to work with dialysis and transplant patients when I graduate and hope that my journey will encourage many to keep going and never give up because life is always worth living, no matter the circumstance. Lupus changes my life, but it didn’t win. It has been in remission for fourteen years. The lessons that I learned through this disease made me a different, better person than I thought I could be. Hard times and trials in life can make or break us, but it’s all up to us to find the positive in every situation and use it to help us in our journey of living life.

top of page

 Idella received an elliptical machine from the foundation.