Help Tonia fight to survive aHUS!

Tonia Sina and her husband, Matthew Ellis in the middle of a terrible storm. Tonia has a rare blood disease called Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. She was triggered with aHUS in 1999 as a freshman in college, and her kidneys began to fail. Her mother, Eleonora, gave her a kidney in 2005. Four healthy years later and right after a beautiful wedding, Tonia began a sudden relapse of aHUS that nearly killed her. Not knowing why she was sick, the doctors didn’t know how to help for two years.

She was finally diagnosed in 2011, and began to stabilize, but her kidney transplant was too scarred to survive, and she went onto dialysis again. After learning home hemodialysis together, her husband, Matthew gave her a second kidney in 2013. Everyone believed this was going to be a longer treatment for Tonia now that she had a diagnosis and treatment for aHUS.

Then, sadly, Matthew’s kidney started to fail after only two and a half years. Tonia tried to stop the rejections with chemotherapy and huge dosages of immuno suppressants, but she started to get incredibly sick in the process. In this time period, Tonia contracted C. Diff, Parvovirus, and other infections that kept bringing her back to the hospitals in dire condition. Tonia and Matthew knew she needed better specialists to care for her to get a third kidney transplant as a complex patient. She started the transplant process for the third time, hoping this would be her last. She began dialysis in December.

After getting initially tested in Oklahoma, she decided to travel to Chicago (her home town) to find the best transplant team she could get. Tonia and her newest donor, Katherine, went through all the testing and were ready to go at Northwest University Transplant Center when they failed their final crossmatch test two days before the transplant was scheduled for February 15th.
Heartbroken, Tonia is waiting for a national donor pool kidney so she can find the best match possible. Her immune system has too many antibodies to accept a kidney she might reject after having two transplants already. Several new donors stepped up to be tested, but no surgery is in sight yet. With no transplant planned, Tonia returned home to Oklahoma again to be with Matthew after three months apart. All the trips to and from Chicago from Oklahoma were a huge risk and took a financial toll.

Now that the surgery will most likely be at some point later in 2018, Tonia and Matthew are trying to raise money for the travel costs of the transplant. In order to assure this kidney survives, Northwestern has a vigorous recovery schedule that consists of several biopsies. Tonia has to travel back and forth each time in order to make sure she is following orders. We all really want this transplant to last as long as possible so Tonia can be healthy and the family can feel some semblance of relief.

If you want to help Tonia get her kidney, please give a few dollars to this campaign. Every little bit helps!