A South Florida woman was living her dream as a flight attendant when lupus began attacking her kidneys. Then, a phone call changed her life.<\/p>\n
Jenniffer Menco spent years flying around the world while lupus was slowly destroying her kidneys.<\/p>\n
“I was more fatigued. I had more pain,” Menco said. \u201cI used to fly only long-haul international, so that\u2019s 10 hours, 15 hours, and I just started to see that I was not the same anymore.”<\/p>\n
She developed kidney disease, forcing her to trade long-haul flights for 10-hour dialysis treatments several times a week.<\/p>\n
“When they told me, ‘You’re going to need a transplant in the future,’ I’m thinking when I’m 71, 75,” Menco said. “I’m like, I’m not even 30 yet.”<\/p>\n
For a year, dialysis kept her alive as she waited for a transplant. While family and friends helped search for a compatible kidney donor, Menco leaned on her faith.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t tell anybody at church what was going on,\u201d she said. \u201cI just kept everything, not a secret, but I just kept it for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
She did tell one woman, Sharon Figueroa.<\/p>\n
“I first met Jen when she started attending the church where my husband was one of the pastors on staff,” Figueroa told NBC6 from North Carolina, where she lives now. “She came to a Bible study.”<\/p>\n
Figueroa, a mother of eight and the wife of a pastor, could not shake the feeling that she was meant to help.<\/p>\n
Without telling Menco, Figueroa went through months of testing to determine whether she could donate a kidney. It turned out she was a perfect match.<\/p>\n
When Menco’s doctor called her into the office, she had no idea who her donor was.<\/p>\n
“She opens the door, and I\u2019m like, ‘Oh my God,'” Menco said. “She says, ‘I’m your donor.’ We hugged. I cried. They had already told me the surgery was going to be on this day, so I\u2019m thinking, ‘How did this happen?'”<\/p>\n
Menco asked Figueroa what would happen if one of her eight children ever needed a kidney.<\/p>\n
“You could hold on to everything you have and say maybe one day someone needs it, and maybe someone even closer,” Figueroa said. “But that’s not how I see it.”<\/p>\n
With that gesture of kindness, Figueroa gave Menco something she thought she might never get: her future.<\/p>\n
“Only about 15% to 20% of all transplants that happen within the nation come from living donors,” said Dr. Adarsh Vijay with the Memorial Transplant Institute. “To find a perfect living donor match is extremely rare, and I would say Jenniffer is extremely blessed.”<\/p>\n
Vijay said more than 90,000 people across the country remain on the transplant waiting list, hoping for their own miracle.<\/p>\n
Figueroa said the donor screening process was thorough. Today, she is healthy and back to her normal routine.<\/p>\n
“I want the best for her. I want a good and healthy life for her just because I love her,” Figueroa said. “But I don\u2019t feel like she owes me anything. It\u2019s her kidney now. She even named it.”<\/p>\n
For Menco, the gift was about much more than receiving an organ.<\/p>\n
“Having this kidney was more than just a donor,” she said. “She gave me a second life. She gave me a second chance.”<\/p>\n
Menco said she now feels great and plans to take her first international flight in just a few days, fittingly, on her birthday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Florida woman was living her dream as a flight attendant when lupus began attacking her kidneys.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250,807],"class_list":["post-339839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-south-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}