❤️ An Update On Amanda Keller's Friend's Journey In Donating Her Kidney To Her Daughter

Anyone who’s heard Amanda talk about her love for Barry Manilow has probably also heard her mention her childhood best friend, Melanie. Earlier this year, Melanie’s world was turned upside down when her daughter, Jess, was suddenly diagnosed with renal failure.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jersey and Amanda jam Nason like Thursdays because it's pie Day.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Garlo drops all the pies up into the pie warmer.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
I don't eat the pies because I'm tapering at the moment,
but I like the smell, just hanging.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Around for the smell.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And also your podcast You do with your good friend
are forensic psychologist Ananda McGregor drops a Chattery.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
A couple of months ago, we spoke to my best
friend from my school days and she's a through line
in my life.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Is that the word?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Melanie. We've loved Barry Malow together, we travel together, it's everything.
She it was New Year's Eve where her daughter Jess,
who's twenty nine, I think thirty one something like that,
she went for a blood test. She'd been overseas, wasn't
feeling so great. She'd come back. She had a blood test.
She was in full renal failure, absolute full renal failure.

(00:55):
So the solution was a transplant, a kidney transper and
Melanie said that she would be the donor. We spoke
to Melanie and Jess before their surgery, and we spoke
to them the episode drops today. How they're going since
they're surgery it's interesting that mel had huge fear they

(01:16):
both did, of surgery. And as Melanie said, and she'd
been told about this, is that it's not a normal
thing to have an operation to remove a healthy organ.
So there's some psychological stuff that goes with that. But
when it's for your child, well she said, she didn't
question it.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yea, yeah, so I said. When they said she's in renal,
faid Aaron shall have to go on dialysis and her
best hope is a transplant, then I said, pick me.
So we then started the process of doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
And that's not an easy process either. It's a detailed process,
isn't it.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
It's a detailed process and extremely thorough. So it's a
great way to get a complete grease and oil change.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
The lengths you've gone to. So they were when we
first spoke to them. I didn't want to lean into
and even and I didn't want ask them about how
terrified they were at the idea of it. But Melanie's
very thorough. She had hip replacement a couple of years ago,
and I've had one too. But I asked no questions.
I didn't care, Just do it. She asked a million questions.
She wanted to know a million things about the surgery.

(02:18):
That's how she deals with her fear, and Jess also
had a lot of fears beforehand.

Speaker 5 (02:24):
I think it was more so the fear of the unknown.
I think for me personally, the surgery was the biggest
thing because I'd never had a surgery in my life
and this is a pretty big surgery, so naturally I
was absolutely freaking out. But the way that the renal
teams and the coordinators handle all of this is great.
They ask or request you to go and see a psychiatrist.

(02:44):
They have a renal psych on team as well. You
can go see a private psych in the lead up
to your surgeries to make sure that you're as grounded
as you can be. So I went for four or
five sessions to make sure that I was okay. Because
my personal struggle was dealing with the actual surgery. I
didn't really care too much about the aftermath or anything,
because in my head, the immediate thing was the surgery.

(03:07):
So I needed to kind of get that fear out
of the way. And now that I look back on it,
easiest thing I've done.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
And you don't think of that, do you really? You
just think a kidney transplant. It happens. There's a whole
bunch of psychologists that can help me out through this.
If you're going through this right now.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Or through anything. We're so lucky to live in a
country with this stuff happened to you. And they helped
her narrow down, Okay, let's look at this. What is
your fear, let's work on that. And she went in
as prepared as she possibly could be, with all all
the tools she needed to get through it. And Melanie
said the same thing. She went in with huge fear,

(03:43):
and she said it's the easiest procedure she'd ever had,
and if she had a spare kidney that she could spare,
she'd do this for a stranger, because she said, really,
there's nothing to it.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Mel's and Jess's health improved instantly, So you felt better
than you had been the previous year.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
Probably the previous five years. I'd just been masking how
I felt. I realized I felt quite mediocre for the
last five years, probably since I was like twenty five,
twenty six. And within a week I was like, I
get it, Like I'm full of energy. My skin completely
cleared up, my eyes were white as anything, and I

(04:20):
was like, I'm good to go. I feel amazing, So
that's great.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, she had high blood pressure, that's what happened. She
didn't have a kidney disease. She had high blood pressure
and that was destroying her organs and particularly her kidney,
which had stopped working pretty much. And she wasn't aware
of any of this. A young woman, she thought, I
don't feel well or feel whatever's that's what being young
and going out is about. So her big messages, if
you're not well, get yourself checked.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Double a Chattery. It drops today Thursday. Check it out.
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