Some bodies give up after the first defeat. And then there are people like Lisa Myers, who after losing two kidneys, enduring ten full years of dialysis, and battling an illness that covered her skin in blisters, still had the strength to try again a third time.
It all began in 1995, with swelling in her feet that Lisa, then in her thirties, barely took seriously. The next day, her urine looked like soapy water. The diagnosis was harsh: nephrotic syndrome; her kidneys were failing. She decided not to give up: she became a nurse and maintained her kidney health for ten years with diet, exercise, and medication.
In 2005, the inevitable came: peritoneal dialysis and the waiting list for a transplant. The call came quickly, just four months later. But three years later, that first kidney began to fail.
Her own coworkers offered to be donors. One of them was a perfect match. But before the surgery, Lisa developed an extremely rare autoimmune disease that covered her body in blisters. She overcame that too. She had surgery in 2009. And that second kidney, after a hemorrhage and a full month fighting to save it, did not hold up either. She went back to dialysis. She started over.
It was not until 2018, while she was finishing a master’s degree, that a friend suggested she sign up at a second transplant center. She set just one condition before joining the list: graduate first. She did. And the phone rang again.
When she woke up from that third surgery, she saw something she had not seen in ten years: a bag of urine. The kidney was working. She went back to sleep, peacefully, for the first time in a long time.
“Third time’s the charm”, she said afterward. Today, four years later, that kidney is still working. Lisa is a school nurse, volunteers, and started therapy to heal what dialysis could not touch.
She lost twice. But she never stopped fighting for the third time.