By Ted Alcorn
Kehinde
Majekodumi does not look desperately ill. A vibrant 24-year-old, she
bears little outward sign except a scar beneath her collarbone where a
catheter was once inserted.
But three
times a week she deviates from her regular commute between the
apartment she shares with her twin sister and her job in a university
admissions office to a dialysis center in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.
There
she spends four hours hooked up to a machine that substitutes for her
failing kidneys. As it removes waste products from her bloodstream, it
can induce terrible cramps, and each session leaves her weary and
nauseated. But it is all that is keeping her alive.
“Unless
I tell people, they don’t know,” Ms. Majekodumi said. “I don’t mind
telling people, but I don’t want that to be the thing they know me for.”
She
is one of around 8,500 New Yorkers with organ failure who are currently
awaiting the only treatment that can meaningfully change their lives —
an organ transplant.
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Source: The New York Times
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