LYNN — A longtime educator in the city is hoping for a life-changing donation.
Marc Feldmann has been working in Lynn Public Schools for 23 years and was working as a freshman English teacher at Classical High School until this year when he went on sick leave amid a battle with end-stage kidney disease.
“Marc has never wanted to quit everything in his life,” Marc’s wife, Jacqlyn Feldmann, said. “He’s always put in umpteenth amounts of time teaching.”
Marc Feldmann has had the disease for nearly a decade after developing it as a side effect of medication to treat an unrelated medical condition.
According to Jacqlyn Feldmann, who works with him at Lynn Classical, despite her husband’s lifestyle changes, which included implementing a vegan diet, his symptoms have gotten worse in the past year, which has at times debilitated his ability to teach.
“He has battled it valiantly,” she said. “He just recently has really felt a change in his overall existence and his body…It’s been a battle daily for him.”
Marc Feldmann said it has been hard not being in the classroom this school year like he had for decades.
“It’s tough to leave. It’s tough to give up those kinds of connections with kids and kind of isolate myself from people I have gotten used to and enjoyed seeing on a daily basis over the years,” Marc Feldmann said. “But it’s something I have to do, I think, to be around for enough more years to possibly have a family.”
Jacqlyn Feldmann said that given Marc’s recent decline in health, he was in desperate need of a kidney transplant, which Jacqlyn Feldmann herself was determined ineligible by doctors.
“That’s the only solution to kidney disease, either a transplant or dialysis,” she said. “The thing with dialysis is once you start, you can’t stop…The kidney would extend his life.”
Jacqlyn Feldmann explained that a kidney transplant would allow her husband not only to have a better quality of life than he would if he were to continue in his current state but allow him to avoid dialysis, which Jacqlyn Feldmann said would come with an uncertain future.
“A new kidney would really just be an entire life changer,” Jacqlyn Feldmann said. “We have plans and goals.”
Though Marc Feldmann said he’s made peace with the possibly grim outcomes of his disease, he was hopeful that he would find a way to have not only a longer life but a quality life.
“I’m trying to stay positive and really devote this time to improving my health,” he said. “I want to be around for things like possibly having a child and being able to spend time with my wife.”
Jacqlyn Feldmann said that despite the obstacles her husband faces, she knows he is strong enough to continue and will keep holding onto hope for a match to arise.
“We’re close to him getting sicker and sicker, and it’s scary,” Jacqlyn Feldmann said. “But he’s been fighting and valiantly trying to live through this.”
Jacqlyn Feldmann said anyone interested in t becoming Marc’s donor could reach out to Julie Hoggan at Square Knot Health at 617-468-4245.
