Brianna Herrera, a first-generation Mexican-American student at Kutztown University, studied music education by day and performed 10 hours of peritoneal dialysis each night in her dorm room during her two-year wait for a kidney transplant.
With a surprise diagnosis of a kidney disease her senior year of high school, Herrera wasn’t sure of her path forward.
“I felt like I had no future,” she recalled. “I didn’t think I would make it to college. My world felt like it was ending.”
But she used her lifelong love of music and sheer willpower to make it through her new, frustrating regimen.
“My superpower is I’m extremely determined,” she said.
While she was on the waiting list, she said, “I know that once it’s real, once I’m in the hospital, once I’m prepping for surgery … I’ll be able to reclaim my life.”
Now that a donor hero has enabled Herrera to receive a kidney transplant, she has done just that.
“I know that many people don’t think about organ donation, but it helps give others an opportunity to get their life back, to keep going and I think that that’s something beautiful,” she said.
Like Brianna, over 100,000 patients nationally are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant. You can help provide hope to those waiting by registering as a donor today.