A Winchester woman needs a kidney, and her community is rallying around her
Kara Yimoyines was diagnosed with lupus at age 16. Now her kidneys function at just 13 percent.
Many of Kara Yimoyines’s neighbors in Winchester didn’t even know she was ill until about a week and a half ago, but now the community is rallying around Yimoyines to help her find a kidney.
Yimoyines was diagnosed with lupus when she was 16. She’s a former athlete; she played soccer growing up, rugby through college, and worked as a women’s rugby coach at Tufts until a few years ago, so she’s had her identity wrapped up in being strong, she said. Now 39 years old, Yimoyines has just 13 percent function in her kidneys, and she’s reaching out for help.
After already testing to see if her family and inner circle could be a match, she posted a note first to her personal Facebook page and then to a Winchester residents Facebook group. From there, The Winchester Star picked up her story, then Boston magazine.
“I thought, ‘I’ve lived in Winchester for nine years now, I have young children in school there; maybe I should post to this group.’ And the general outpouring of support was pretty overwhelming,” Yimoyines said. “People immediately said they were willing to be tested as a match.”
Though getting tested for a kidney match isn’t a very invasive procedure, Yimoyines’s situation makes finding a match difficult. Because she has Type O blood, she can only receive a donation from someone else who is also Type O, and because of her autoimmune disease, another 50 percent of those donors won’t be compatible.
Every time someone wants to see if they’re a match for Yimoyines, the doctors at Tufts Medical do a cross match, meaning they draw blood from the potential donor and mix it with some of Yimoyines’s blood to see how many antibodies her blood produces, indicating whether or not the potential donor is a match. If it’s too many, her body will attack the new blood.
One of Yimoyines’s friends, Sarah Jones, created a Facebook group called A Kidney for Kara to raise awareness about her friend’s situation and try to reach more possible donors.
“We had kids in preschool together, and [Jones is] living in Italy right now, but she saw [my post] in the Winchester group and said, ‘Let me do this for you,’” Yimoyines said. “She was able to flood the page with facts about kidneys, sent out questions to have people post why they’re there, how they knew me. It was wonderful to have her support.”
Thanks in part to that group, Tufts is currently testing a group of people to see if they’re a match. They came in last week to have their blood drawn for lab work, and Yimoyines is still waiting on the outcome—results take 10 days.
In the meantime, those who aren’t able to be a match are still rallying around Yimoyines. One neighbor created a lemonade stand and invited over Yimoyines’s kids to help out with the spontaneous fundraiser. That neighbor, who happens to work as a nutritionist specializing in renal function, also gave Yimoyines some recipes.
“It’s all happened kind of quickly,” Yimoyines said. “It’s restored my faith in humanity.”
Yimoyines also encouraged anyone who has reached out but isn’t able to be her kidney match to consider being a living donor for someone else in need.
Learn about being a living donor at kidney.org/transplantation/livingdonors. If you’d like to volunteer to be tested as a potential donor for Yimoyines, contact her at [email protected].
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