The Seattle Medium | Cynthia Flash
Damon Brown and Darren Patillo have a lot in common. The two Seattle area residents have battled kidney disease since they were young and are now doing well, thanks to kidney transplants.
Both are family men with young children. Both hold professional jobs. And both will tell their stories at Northwest Kidney Centers’ Kidney Health Fest for African American Families on June 2. They’ll speak in the morning educational program at the event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Van Asselt Elementary, 8311 Beacon Ave. S., Seattle.
They’ll talk about how they learned they had kidney disease, what they've gone through to stay alive and healthy since their kidneys failed, and how they found their kidney donors. They will offer advice to other African Americans who may or may not know their kidneys are at risk.
While 1 in 7 American adults has kidney disease, the number increases four-fold for the African American community. African American men are 10 to 14 times more likely to develop kidney failure due to high blood pressure than Caucasian men in the same age group.
Here are Brown’s and Patillo’s stories, in anticipation of their appearance at the Kidney Health Fest for African American Families.
“Today I can finally report that I am brand new, renovated and updated,” Damon Brown posted on his Facebook page May 7. That was four months and four days since the Garfield High School graduate received a new kidney in a very public way. It was public because Brown found his donor after a search on Facebook that was widely covered by the news media. In fact, the story went around the world.
Read more: http://www.seattlemedium.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=113648&sID=4&ItemSource=L
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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