Our daughter, Jordea, is currently 20 years old. Her battle began 2 years ago while she was in her first semester of college at Appalachian State University. Everything was going seemingly great and she was doing well in school until she woke up one morning and everything changed. After multiple trips to different urgent care facilities with perplexing symptoms (swollen joints, exhaustion, difficulty breathing and coughing up blood, to name a few), it was discovered that her kidneys were shutting down. She was quickly transported to Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where they did many tests and procedures to try to find the root cause of her symptoms. What they found out is that has an autoimmune disease called ANCA Vasculitis.
Up to this point, she has had blood transfusions, a process called plasmapheresis (plasma exchange) and kidney biopsies. She has had multiple chemo infusion treatments with no luck saving her kidneys. She is now in end-stage renal failure. She started at-home nightly dialysis (peritoneal dialysis) in January 2023 and is now waiting to receive a kidney transplant. Since she is so young, she will most likely need at least 2 kidney transplants throughout her lifetime. Jordea has hopes of being able to get back into college full time and continue the journey she was on prior to becoming ill.
Jordea’s family is working with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) to help raise funds to assist with lifelong transplant-related expenses. Our goal is to help alleviate financial stress so she can go through her life knowing that she will be able to receive the care that she needs without the burden of constant medical bills hanging over her head. By becoming a contributor to COTA for Jordea, you are helping COTA to set our beautiful and caring daughter up for a promising future. Her path in life has had a lot of bumps in the road and even though she will continue to have bumps, we hope to take a few away. Any help and assistance in helping reach our fundraising goal for COTA is greatly appreciated and COTA funds will truly help to secure this young lady’s life.
The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation’s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA’s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.