Facebook post leads to kidney transplant for Missouri woman

Published 5:30 pm Friday, October 2, 2015

NEOSHO, Mo. — For Vanessa Copeland, the journey to becoming a kidney donor started with an acquaintance’s Facebook post.

The post came from Brandy Kissel, 34, a Southwest Missouri resident who was in need of a kidney and took to social media to share her story. It didn’t take long for Copeland to message Kissel about her interest in being a donor.

“I just kept thinking, ‘What if it was me, and I needed somebody to stand up for me?’” Copeland said. “I would want that.”

Copeland, 37, who recently moved to Joplin, Missouri from Neosho, ended up giving a kidney to Kissel, who underwent transplant surgery last month. As the two recover, they’re sharing their story in hopes that it can spark change for others.

“We have a responsibility to get the story out there, to say, ‘You can make a difference in somebody’s life,’” Copeland said.

Kissel was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in 2006, when she was pregnant with her first son.

During her second pregnancy, her son was born prematurely because of the disease. 

She had been seeing a nephrologist a couple of times a year since her pregnancies, and in early 2014, her kidney function started to drop. At the beginning of this year, she was placed on the national transplant list.

She had been encouraged in an educational class at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital to share her story in hopes of finding a living donor, because she never knew who she might reach. So she posted her story on Facebook, asking anyone who was willing to be a donor to send her a private message so she could put them in touch with a transplant coordinator.

Within a few minutes, Copeland sent her a message saying that she would be interested in being a donor. The two were acquaintances at the time — they were Facebook friends, Copeland went to high school with Kissel’s husband, and Kissel was friends with Copeland’s sister. But they didn’t know each other well.

Copeland happened to be on her phone at work when she saw Kissel’s post. She hadn’t known about Kissel’s condition, but she sent a private message saying she’d be willing to give the donation process a try.

“It’s one of those things you don’t necessarily anticipate happening, but I always felt like it would be something I’d be willing to do,” she said. “You never know what will happen until you’re faced with a choice.”

In July, Copeland found out she had been selected to be a donor. The transplant surgery was conducted in early September at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital.

“I’m really lucky because there’s lots of people who have to wait multiple years,” Kissel said.

Each year in the U.S., about 90,000 people are waiting for kidney transplants, said Chintalapati Varma, an associate professor in the division of abdominal transplants at Saint Louis University who works at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital. Of those, about 17,000 will receive a kidney, said Varma, who performed the operation on Copeland.

The wait time for a kidney is typically about three years in Missouri and even longer in other parts of the country, Varma said. Variables such as blood type compatibility can affect how long a recipient has to wait. The best thing to do, Varma said, is to have a donor, though some people might find it hard to ask someone to give a kidney.

But he is seeing people more and more willing to put out the word in hopes of finding a donor, and he’s noticed that it seems to be becoming more common for people to turn to tools such as social media.

“Social media nowadays is really, really important,” he said.

Kissel returned to her home in Neosho last week and is on the road to recovery. She’s still on immunosuppressants, but she’s been cleared now to do some walking. Recent lab work has shown increasing kidney function since the transplant, she said.

“Basically I’ve been going stir crazy, but now I’m going to start getting out a bit more,” she said.

Copeland’s recovery is a bit reversed, because she lost a part of her kidney function and has been adjusting to lower energy levels. She took six weeks off work, though she’s started working part time from home. Running and getting out has helped the recovery, and her remaining kidney should pick up the slack so she can return to functioning normally. At the end of September, she ran a 5K.

“I did run it, but it was a very slow run,” she said.

While the two didn’t used to cross paths often, they go out of their way now to interact, Copeland said. While they started out as acquaintances, Copeland now considers Kissel a friend, and she expects that to continue over the years.

As Kissel sees it, the two are friends for life now — she feels that she owes Copeland a debt she can never repay.

“I literally have part of her inside of me, so I feel like it just comes with the territory,” Kissel said.

Hinga writes for the Joplin, (Mo.) Globe.