When Gail Korkhin graduated from Great Neck South High School in 1979, she still resided on Long Island, her last name was Goldstein and she had two functioning kidneys.
Unfortunately for Korkhin, 59, one of her kidneys is now functioning around 10 percent, bringing the need for a donor to provide the South High alumna with a functioning kidney to keep living.
“My filtration rate is currently hovering around 10 percent,” Korkhin said. “That means that the toxins are collecting in my body and they are not filtered out as they should be. This situation makes me exhausted, unable to work, depressed, stressed and at a loss of what is going to happen next.”
Korkhin, who now resides in Livingston, New Jersey, said four years after graduating from high school, troublesome news awaited her.
“I was always an active participant in community life when I was a child. I participated in sports, loved going to school and participated in my community,” Korkhin said. “Yet, In 1983 I learned that I was unable to conceive a child.”
Five years after marrying her husband Boris in 1989, Korkhin said, she got in touch with a woman who was pregnant but did not desire to keep the baby. Korkhin called the occurrence “a miracle,” and ended up naming the baby girl Katherine, her biological mother’s name.
Nearly two decades later, Korkhin learned she was developing kidney failure due to the long-term medicine she was taking.
“I went to many doctors who told me there was no substitute for this drug,” Korkhin said. “Finally in 2016 I finally discovered a doctor who offered me a new drug.”
Despite the drug resulting in no adverse side effects for Korkhin’s health, her kidneys reached the point of no return.
“God blessed me with a wonderful family but my kidneys kept deteriorating,” Korkhin said. “I’ve been told by my nephrologist that I need a kidney transplant. I am searching far and wide, advertising on every social media network, print media and word of mouth that I need a kidney.”
Korkhin said she has been actively looking for a donor since February. She said it is desirable for a healthy, living person to donate a kidney but a donor does not have to be an exact match to her B-positive requirement.
Some transplant centers will aid pairs of recipients and donors through a paired exchange program that involves two living donors and recipients. If the recipient from one pair is compatible with the donor from the second pair, the transplant can arrange for two simultaneous transplants to occur.
“All we need is one altruistic person with a kidney to get the ball rolling here,” Korkhin’s husband, Boris, said. “We have been campaigning for a while now, and hopefully someone out there sees this and can help us out.”
Gail Korkhin said there is very little time before she is forced to begin dialysis treatment, which entails being hooked up to a machine to extract waste products from the bloodstream, something Korkhin hopes she does not have to resort to.
Korkhin said anyone interested in donating can contact the transplant services team at St. Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey and NYU Langone in Manhattan to inquire more or visit her social media platform on Facebook, her website, https://www.nkr.org/sss858, email at gailkorkhin@yahoo.com, or call 201-704-6810.
