KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Maleena Johnson walked into Hitides Coffee in the Crossroads Monday morning expecting shelter from the rain, not a suitcase.
Her mother, Tamra Johnson, didn’t tell Maleena where they were going or why.
“I had no idea what to expect,” Maleena said while stringing flowers into a lei.
At the age of 11, Maleena went into kidney failure after contracting E. coli on a family vacation. She was the only member of her large family affected that badly.
After almost a year of dialysis, her father gave one of his kidneys to her.
“I feel like any parent would offer to do whatever they could to help their child,” Jamie Johnson said. “Certainly, I wanted to do anything I could to help her recover.”
The Johnson family was supposed to attend their Make-A-Wish trip in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic put a wrench in those plans.
Now in her junior year of college at the University of Central Missouri, Maleena appreciates spending more time with her family with a beach as a backdrop.
“I am forever grateful to my dad for donating his kidney to me and forever grateful to my whole family for supporting me and keeping me healthy throughout all these years,” she said. “I figured why not just use it to thank my family for all the support they’ve given me and take them with me on this great trip with me and have the best time ever in Hawaii.”
The Johnson family leaves for their Hawaiian vacation in May after Maleena finishes her junior year.
University of Kansas Health System Nephrologist Jeffery Klein said just under 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for a kidney donation. Many people in the Kansas City area wait three years before getting a kidney donor.
“Our most important focus in someone who is donating an organ is making sure they are healthy enough to do so,” Klein said. “Healthy enough to go through the surgery and in the case of kidney donation, that would be they should be able to live the rest of their life with one kidney instead of two.”
Maleena was lucky enough to have both of her parents as a match.
Tamra plans to donate one of her kidneys in the future, either to her daughter (if needed) or another recipient.
“If I don’t donate it to her, I want to give it to someone else because I’ve seen what a huge blessing it is that I can’t imagine dying with two kidneys,” she said. “I’m hanging on to it a little longer, and then I’ll offer it up to someone else.”
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