WATCH: 44-year-old Adrienne Pace has kidney disease and is kept alive only by regular dialysis. She is on the transplant list, but with no success finding a match, she’s making an agonizing decision. Catherine Urquhart reports.
UPDATE: 44-year-old Adrienne Pace passed away in the early morning hours on Dec. 5 after years of fighting a failing kidney and debilitating dialysis.
A Celebration of Life service will be held on Dec. 13 at 1 p.m. at the Hillside Community Church (1393 Austin Avenue in Coquitlam).
According to Scott Young, the chaplain for Coquitlam Fire/Rescue, Pace’s wish was to bring awareness to the community about kidney disease and in particularly, prevention and the need to be tested if you are at risk.
UPDATE Nov.11, 2014: After years of fighting a failing kidney with debilitating dialysis, 44-year-old Adrienne Pace has decided to end her medical battle.
Although Pace has been on the kidney transplant donor list, a number of candidates have not matched and she’s decided she has no fight left. Pace will be ending her dialysis in a couple of weeks.
Since Global News originally reported on Pace’s plea for a life-saving kidney, her condition has worsened. She’s had three mini-strokes, a fungal brain infection and 33 visits to the emergency room.
Pace estimates she’s been on dialysis for roughly 10 years and could not see relying on it for a lifetime.
Instead, she says, it’s time to say goodbye.
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A Port Coquitlam woman is making a desperate plea in the hopes that a stranger will save her life.
Forty-three-year-old Adrienne Pace says unless she receives a kidney transplant, she only has two months to live. Unfortunately, her husband is not a match.
Pace had a successful kidney transplant 11 years ago, but ever since, her immune system has been compromised.
In the last year, her condition has worsened drastically.
“We were in Abbotsford and I keeled over in pain,” she said. “I was bleeding internally.”
Now, she has no working kidney and has been on dialysis for so long that the veins in her arms are no longer accessible. Doctors are trying to insert tubing into her neck, but without a donor she believes she will not survive.
Pace is hoping for a miracle to save her life.
There are living donor programs where altruistic people volunteer their organs to those in need.
However in B.C., close to 500 people are currently on the waiting list for a life-saving transplant. In 2013, 30 British Columbians died while on the wait list.
While eighty-five per cent of British Columbians agree with organ donation, only 19 per cent have registered to be a donor.
As for any would-be donor who is concerned about their only kidney failing later in life, under the new program, a donor in that situation is automatically placed at the top of the transplant list.
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