2022 Float Walkers
Meet the inspiring living donors.
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Ava was healthy for most of her life, until she developed a rare autoimmune disease, called dermatomyositis. Her condition went misdiagnosed and continued advancing, eventually destroying all of her well-honed dancer's muscles. Ava went from being a ‘super woman' to needing a walker and her body started shut down. While on her way to a doctor's appointment, Ava fell down, unconscious, was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. The disease destroyed Ava's heart and she needed a new one. Ava received a heart transplant in 2009 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. To honor her donor, Ava founded Ava's Heart, a non-profit organization that provides transplant candidates with the housing required to get listed for an organ transplant, as well as assistance to donor families with final expenses. -
In 2019 while working as an apprentice at a funeral home in New Orleans and attending mortuary school, Elise found the opportunity to spread life amongst the death she faced daily. At the same funeral home, the husband of one of the funeral directors was in need of a kidney. Elise was in an optimal position in life to donate, so she followed her desire to help. They both recovered wonderfully from surgery. Elise wants to spread the message of compassion and the importance of helping others. Organ donation - the gift of life - is one of the greatest gifts you can give, but she wants to emphasize that you should strive every day to help make the world a better place and that no action is too small. -
Lynda Trachtman was diagnosed in 1985 with what is known today as hepatitis C. She discovered 6 years later that she was misdiagnosed and that she was HIV positive. The combination of HIV attacking her liver, along with the early HIV antivirals such as AZT, led to a fatty liver and subsequently liver disease. Many people volunteered to donate part of their liver to Lynda, but her beautiful 25-year-old niece, Sherri, insisted she wanted to be the donor. Sherri was a perfect match! The transplant team at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York performed her transplant surgery without know how much immunosuppressive medication to give a person who was already immunocompromised, and Lynda became the first woman in the world to undergo this relatively new live donor transplantation. -
Susan was a caring person who did her best to always help others, so it was only natural when her dad became sick with kidney failure that she volunteered to become his donor. Susan's daughter remembers, "The morning my grandfather went into surgery, he told me how grateful he was to my mom for giving him one of her kidneys" Unfortunately, Milton did not survive the surgery. Despite the pain of grief, Susan remained inspired to care for others. As a dialysis clinic social worker, she dedicated the final leg of her career to caring for patients experiencing the same treatments her father had once undergone. Today, Susan volunteers her time as a OneLegacy Ambassador, to encourage others to register as a donor and to consider living kidney donation.