Donate Life
by Nyah Clifton and Kim Quintal
When Howard High School featured Donate Life Week recently to spotlight organ and tissue donation, our own senior Michaela Wallace took notice.
The 18-year-old received a life-saving kidney transplant in April 2021 and said Mrs. Redding asked her if she would share her experience with her Howard family. She said she does not mind telling people how important organ donors are.
During the pandemic, Wallace said she started to notice that something was not right.
“ I was sick when we got out of school for Covid. I kept throwing up,” Wallace said.
As Wallace’s sickness started to progress, she said that she knew it was time to seek medical attention. At Navicent Health, now known as Atrium Health, Wallace went to see a blood doctor to figure out what was wrong. However, the doctors were just as stumped as she was.
“They didn’t know what it was. They thought it was acid reflux, but the medicine did not work,” said Wallace.
Doctors transferred Wallace to the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta (CHOA) where her nephrologist (kidney specialist), Dr. Guaru, informed her that she was in need of a new kidney, according to Wallace.
While waiting for the kidney, she said she began the lengthy process of dialysis on April 15, 2020, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Even though she knew she was on her way to recovery, the journey to get there was a grueling one.
“Dialysis is painful. Dialysis makes you tired and throw up. I would get nauseated, and I lost 60 pounds,” said Wallace. It also causes leg cramps and hunger, since the patient cannot eat during the hours the process takes.
However, with the support of her family, Wallace did not lose sight of her goal.
“My whole family was with me,” Wallace said. “They stayed in the Ronald McDonald house. They made sure I wasn’t sad and that I took all my medicine. They were keeping me up.”
With there only being one children’s dialysis location in the entire state of Georgia, Wallace had to go back and forth to the location for a year, until she finally received her kidney transplant on April 9, 2021.
She said she did her school work remotely during this time and had the help of good friends to make sure she did not fall behind. While there, she became close with another girl who received a kidney a few months before she did, who is now becoming a nurse.
Wallace had to wait a year to find out information about her donor, which is the donor policy. She said she will talk to her doctor about it next time, but she understands it was someone younger than she is who passed away.
Organ donation saved Michaela and her friend, which is the goal of Donate Life.
“That kidney is very precious to me,” she said. She recently lost her father, who was a tissue donor as well.
Donate Life America is a non-profit organization that specializes in promoting and increasing the donation of organs, eyes, and tissue to save and heal lives through transplantation.
Through their mission, Donate Life America and the Donate Life community have registered over 170 million organ, eye, and tissue donors in the United States in the past 30 years, according to its website.
Recently, our Student Council invited Donate Life to Howard High School to inform students about their organization and to educate people about the life-giving importance of organ and tissue donation, with Mrs. Farriba organizing the events.
Wallace said she hopes others become organ and tissue donors, and she hopes she can donate her own organs when the time comes.
“You can’t do anything with it after you’re gone, but you can help somebody,” said Wallace, who is about to start college at Georgia Southwestern to study psychology.
Mrs. Farriba said the Student Council worked with Donate Life Week to raise awareness of this important gift here at Howard. Contact her for more information.
