Support for Alyssa Roller

Hi, my name is Caitlin and I am fundraising to help my best friend Alyssa with medical costs. Please consider donating to help Alyssa through this extremely difficult time. This experience has been mentally, physically and emotionally hard on her, but she is an incredibly brave and strong person (if you know her personally, you know this is how she has always been. She has been a rock and a guiding light for so many). Every donation counts.

In November of 2022, both of Alyssa's kidneys failed without warning. She is only 26 years old. Her medical staff is still unaware what caused them to fail, and she has been bravely fighting through extensive medical treatment and dialysis during the past year while waiting for a kidney transplant.

Her Story:

Alyssa had been experiencing headaches and blurred vision, so she made an eye appointment with a local vision clinic.

As soon as the nurse there assessed her, she told Alyssa to get to an Emergency room right away. Little did we know that this woman would have ended up saving Alyssa's life by telling her to go to the ER. Upon arriving to the emergency room, Alyssa's blood pressure was taken and she was immediately admitted to the hospital for extensive testing due to her having extremely high blood pressure for seemingly no reason. This was all within one day.

During her admission she was thoroughly tested for what could be causing her symptoms as she had no existing health conditions or concerns, and no family history that would explain them. They discovered pretty quickly that Alyssa's symptoms were from both of her kidneys failing. They did more testing, exams, biopsies.. still no explanation for her kidney failure. It is very uncommon for a healthy 26 year old to be admitted to the hospital for two failing kidneys. Without functioning kidneys to remove waste and excess fluids from her blood, Alyssa was in ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease).

Once Alyssa got through the long process of hospital admission and diagnosis of her ESRD, she was discharged from the hospital with a completely altered daily life. The things she is able to eat, drink and do were now heavily limited, and she also had to go to a dialysis clinic every other day to receive dialysis. After a while of having to go to the clinic for dialysis, she had to go through the process of getting a port and being trained/instructed to do at-home dialysis since she would likely have to be on dialysis for a long period of time while waiting for a kidney transplant. The at home dialysis requires Alyssa to be home every night and hooked up to her dialysis machine at bedtime and during the night. This limited her functions of daily life even more, but she continues to bravely fight through.

As of January 17th, Alyssa is still on at home dialysis and is heavily limited in her functions of daily life. She will continue dialysis up until surgery, and then her recovery will be long and uphill, and she will have to maintain her lifestyle and follow up with her team of doctors and medical staff to ensure that she is healthy and that the donor kidney is not rejected. This will be a very long road, so any amount contributed will make a difference to Alyssa.

Also as of today, I was cleared for surgery as her living donor for her kidney transplant. Other donors among her close family and friends were evaluated, but in the end we ended up as the best match. We have been best friends since we were 4, so we have been through 22 years of life together. That is almost our whole lives spent together... every high, every low, every single thing we have been there with each other. We have been friends so long that I don't even remember my life without Alyssa, and I do not ever want to have to do that. It seems like before we even knew, we were destined to be friends. We have been a "match" since day one, all along not knowing what the future would hold. Alyssa means more than the world to me, and the fact that I get the ability to do anything to be helpful to her during this time is the greatest gift life has ever given me. As we continue to wait for our surgery date, please consider making a donation to help her through this time, any and everything will be so appreciated and will all go directly to Alyssa.