She was ready to save her sister by donating her kidney. Then the doctor said she wasn’t “healthy enough”
She wasn't as healthy as she thought.
Coming from a family with two sickly sisters, MacKenzie Dias (@mackattackd) was ready to donate her kidney to one of them. But when her doctor assessed her, Dias wasn’t fit to become an organ donor.
“My family has donated organ after organ. My parents were one of the first in the world to donate a lobe of lung each to my sister, Lindsay. Then, two aunts donated a lobe of lung each to my sister, Ashley,” Dias told TikTok. At one point, her aunts also donated kidneys to Ashley. However, despite their best efforts, Ashley still passed away.
“And then after a year, Ashley died. Lindsay needed another kidney transplant,” Dias explained. At the time, Dias was already of age and thought she was healthy enough to donate a kidney to save her sister.
“This isn’t My Sister’s Keeper, by the way,” she disclaimed. In the movie, Anna Fitzgerald was genetically engineered and conceived to save her sister, Kate, who was suffering from a terminal disease. Most notably, Anna tried fighting for medical emancipation after her parents expected her to donate her kidney at thirteen to her sister. Not only was the surgery risky for Anna and Kate, but it was also life-altering.
In Dias’ case, she clarified that her parents didn’t have her to sustain any of her sisters. As an adult, she chose to give her sister Lindsay her kidney. “I’m old enough now, I’m the healthy one, I think it’s my time to give the kidney,” Dias recalled. Unlike her sisters, who both needed intensive care, Dias was relatively healthier.
She spoke to her mother about her plan to donate, and even her mother felt uncertain about her daughter’s choice. But Dias reassured her mother, then submitted the organ donor form to the hospital.
She couldn’t be an organ donor for this reason
“So, I get tested, and the doctor sits me down. And they essentially tell me I’m not healthy enough to donate,” Dias said. At first, she was confused by the assessment. Among her sisters, she seemed to have no health issues.
“You don’t understand. My entire life, I have been told that I’m the healthy one,” she said. But aside from not being in and out of the hospital like her sisters, Dias admitted that she has been struggling with her mental health. She explained, “An eating disorder was something I deeply struggled with. But because I wasn’t dying, no one really acknowledged that there was something going on with me.”
Although she never thought a doctor would tell her that she wasn’t fit to become a kidney organ donor, Dias realized she needed to improve her health first to help her sister. According to the National Institutes of Health, chronic hypokalemia caused by anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa can lead to hypokalemic nephropathy and chronic kidney disease. Essentially, mental health can affect a person’s physical well-being, as is the case with Dias.
Dias said that for two years, she did everything in her power to heal from her eating disorder. She physically recovered and, in the end, was able to donate a kidney to her sister in 2014. But in a heartbreaking turn of events, Dias said Lindsay passed away the next year, in 2015. Not all good deeds have happy endings, but one grocery store cashier’s act of sympathy got her an unexpected gift.
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