MARBLEHEAD — She may be more than 200 miles away, and locked down amid a global pandemic, but Andrea Gleason is looking to her hometown friends, her family, and the residents of Marblehead to help find her a new kidney.
Gleason, 39, was a lifelong resident of Marblehead before going to college in Vermont and later taking a job in finance in New York City. Formerly an “extremely active” woman, athlete, and triathlon runner, Gleason’s health went down hill 10 years ago when her aorta ruptured.
She’s had four open-heart surgeries since, resulting in a multitude of health problems, including kidney disease and renal failure, and needs a qualified living person with a matching blood type to donate their kidney to her. The red roadside signs in Marblehead, the messages displayed on the marquee at the local theater, and the messages circulating on the Facebook page All Marblehead Happenings are all part of Gleason’s campaign.
“I’m very optimistic. The list is long (to get a kidney), but I’m young,” Gleason said. “The people who want to be a donor, they get nothing out of it. But there are those people out there with compassion, and it surprises me.”
Discounting minor allergies, Gleason said her health was virtually perfect until age 29. She exercised every day, had a personal trainer, and competed in athletic events. But one morning, as she was getting out of bed and ready for work, she felt a strong pain in her left arm. Gleason went back to bed, trying to sleep it off. Later, and looking for a distraction, she went to a yacht club with her father to relax and have drinks. The pain worsened, and her mother called an ambulance. Gleason was ultimately rushed to the emergency room where she underwent open-heart surgery.
“The whole situation was weird,” Gleason said. “I couldn’t believe it. You don’t think, ‘My aorta ruptured and I’m bleeding into my chest cavity.’”
Gleason believes her aorta ruptured due to congenital factors. Her mother has had an aortic aneurysm, and her father’s first cousin ruptured his aorta the same day Gleason did, but he died from the incident, she said.
“I was extremely healthy,” she said. “I was running every day for three miles, at least six every other time. I was cycling, doing triathlons, skiing, playing tennis.”
Gleason was scarred physically and emotionally after the first surgery. She couldn’t be as active — an active lifestyle was always how Gleason relieved stress. Yearly checkups with the surgeon followed, and “there was always bad news,” she said.
The first surgery to repair her aorta resulted in a diminished blood flow to certain tissues, and she needed another surgery in 2012, and another in 2014.
“Every time I heal, I would get better and then feel better, but then there would have to be another surgery and it would bring me back to ground zero,” Gleason said.
Gleason underwent a fourth surgery at Mass General Hospital in 2016, and she now has a completely synthetic aorta. As far as her heart is concerned, everything is working fine, but a CT scan in 2017 revealed her right kidney was essentially nonfunctional, likely a result of her poor blood flow following multiple heart surgeries. Gleason’s two brothers were tested to see if they could donate one of their kidneys, and although they were “a match,” their prior health conditions eliminated them as potential donors.
Gleason currently undergoes dialysis three times a week for three hours each session. It’s a short-term solution to her renal failure, given her multiple prior surgeries and the fact that dialysis can raise her blood pressure to “dangerous levels,” she said. She suffers from extreme fatigue and the clouded thoughts of “kidney brain,” as well as a lack of appetite and other issues.
“The kidney affects everything,” Gleason said. “But if I get a kidney, a lot of this will go away. My memories will come back, my appetite will come back, my energy will come back.”
Since January, Gleason has been campaigning to find a donor. Warwick Cinema in Marblehead put up a message on its marquee asking people interested in becoming a donor for Gleason to contact Mass General Hospital. More than 10 people from Marblehead — some who Gleason knows, others whom she doesn’t — have initiated the process of becoming donors, and people who don’t even know Gleason are sharing her information online to help her.
Gleason is stuck in New York City amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She no longer has her job in finance, and wants to go back to Marblehead. For now, she’s asking for help from afar.
“In the city, I haven’t put this out there. You never know about putting this out there in the big city. There can be weirdos,” Gleason said. “But I love Marblehead. It’s just, when I lived there I always said, ‘I need to get out of here,’ because in a small town, everyone knows everything about everyone. But in my case, it ends up being a good thing because I know a lot of people and a lot of people care about me.”
Gleason is optimistic a donor will be found, and she said her doctors are too. The number of strangers who have sent her messages saying they’d be willing to give Gleason their kidney has been astonishing, she said. Transplant programs are currently on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, but people may still fill out the forms to see if they could potentially become a donor, and begin the process.
“There are people out there that want to help and they have a whole lot of compassion. They either know me and want to help me, or they just want to do something for someone else,” she said.
To begin the process of becoming a live kidney donor for Gleason, visit mghlivingdonors.org/?fbclid=IwAR320_n78Nqph4QaHDoyEA2bRiERDRgaokB0e_oJfjwc0hwNhBnoQsH8X5M, or call (617) 643-7193. You may contact her with questions at (781) 576-9273.
David McLellan can be reached at [email protected].
