If you or someone you love needs a kidney transplant, the Find a Kidney website offers a wide range of resources and support to help you search for a living donor. Register now and take the first step toward finding a match.
My Child’s Kidney Transplant Story: Aiden Hess
Back in 2009, when Aiden was four years old, he started showing symptoms of kidney issues. He was peeing blood—it was so red it looked like fruit punch.
We took him to the pediatrician (not his regular pediatrician), and he dismissed it. He thought it was juice. Well, I don’t give my kids juice—that was blood. We took him back to his regular pediatrician, and he ordered a kidney ultrasound. Before we even walked out of the hospital, he told us we needed to see a pediatric nephrologist immediately.
We eventually went to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia for a kidney biopsy. What was supposed to be a one-night stay ended up being a month. Aiden was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, brought on by rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis. I said, thank God it wasn’t cancer. The doctor looked at me and said, cancer would have been better.
When I went to see him in the hospital, I didn’t recognize my own child. He looked like the girl who blew up like a blueberry in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He was in bad shape. They said Aiden was the second worst case that the hospital had ever seen. His blood pressure was off the charts, and they were afraid he was going to stroke out, so they had to figure out how to get that under control.
For this disease, they give six months of Cytoxan, a chemo drug that is supposed to stop the disease. He had another biopsy after the six months that showed the disease had improved but was still there. They gave him another drug called rituximab, which has several potential side effects, including making him sterile, but we didn’t have a choice. At that point, it was live or die, and we had to choose live.
The doctor said it worked—the monster was now in the box. At that point, it would just be a matter of watching him. He was doing great, but eventually he would need a kidney transplant.
The doctor we had been working with left, which was very tough because he was everything to us. We tried a few other doctors but weren’t comfortable with them. We finally ended up with a doctor at a local nephrology practice. After seeing him one time, he said Aiden had to go on dialysis. It was such a shock.
He started dialysis on January 29, 2024. He went on the waitlist for a cadaver kidney, with a projected wait time of five to seven years. They recommended that we try to find a living donor. My husband and I were both disqualified for diabetes and being overweight.
We got his microsite set up, and I got him on the list at Temple University Hospital. I didn’t know he could be on multiple lists, but when I found he could, I also took him to Hackensack, and he got on the list there. I also connected with our local hospital, Lehigh Valley.
Everyone was saying he would have to wait five to seven years. One day when we were doing dialysis, the head of the center came in and told us he had just received a spreadsheet of every hospital in the country that does kidney transplants. He said the University of Toledo Medical Center had a very short waitlist, and they transplant very quickly. So I called.
Because we were out of state, we had to do an all-day appointment to get on the waitlist. At the orientation, they said their wait time was four months. Aiden and I looked at each other and said, did they say four months?
When we met the surgeon, he asked if we had tried to find a living donor. We said yeah, kind of. We hung up some posters and passed out some cards, but did we really, really try? No. I’m the kind of person who won’t even ask to borrow a quarter—how do you ask for a kidney?
One night right before Christmas, I was looking online and saw people asking for Christmas gifts and food. I contacted the moderator and said, I see all these wants and needs; my son needs a kidney—if I make a post, will you approve it? She said absolutely.
So I made a post, and the Lehigh Valley news picked it up, and the local news channel did a story. That’s when the microsite really started getting hits.
Aiden Hess
So I made a post, and the Lehigh Valley news picked it up, and the local news channel did a story. That’s when the microsite really started getting hits.
In January, we got a call from Temple—they had a match for him. They wanted to do the transplant on January 29. At the time, he was having a lot of gastrointestinal issues, and they wanted to do a colonoscopy. The colonoscopy was scheduled for two days before the transplant. We let Temple know, and they rescinded the offer. I was crushed.
We pressed on, hoping to go through Lehigh Valley. We had two people reach out to us to say they had progressed pretty far with the testing. One person was eventually eliminated, but the other was in the final stages. We met her: she was 45, did triathlons, and was the epitome of health.
But when they did an ultrasound, they found a stone in one of her kidneys. They were going to give Aiden the kidney without the stone, but they didn’t want to leave her stuck. We didn’t hear anything for a month as they continued testing.
Then, Temple reached out to her to release her as the donor. They had found a better match for Aiden—someone who had registered through his microsite. He had his transplant on May 21, 2025, at Temple. He was expected to be in the ICU for one to two days, but he was out in less than 24 hours. He was doing amazing. On his first night with the new kidney, he produced two gallons of urine. His blood pressure came down. Overall, he was doing great.
The woman who we thought was going to be our donor has become a huge supporter and advocate for Aiden. Temple asked if she would consider still donating to someone else, and she said yes, as long as Aiden gets the credit. So she might do a voucher for him.
We don’t know who his donor is. A couple days after the transplant, a woman came into Aiden’s room to tell us that the donor had chosen to remain anonymous but had written Aiden a letter. Basically, they wanted to remain anonymous because they didn’t want any accolades.
The message I want to get out there is: Don’t lose faith. There are good people out there. With all the bad going on in the world, especially with social media, here’s a good thing that happened. Without social media, I could not have gotten Aiden’s message out there.
When he was on peritoneal dialysis, he did it for nine hours a night. That was his life for almost 16 months. That is no life for a 19 or 20-year-old. Now he has this wonderful gift from this angel who we have not even met. We know nothing about her, which is killing me because I am a hugger, and I want to hug her. We are just so, so thankful.