kidney

Yeah.

So, um, yeah, I was, I was born with the kidney condition.

Um, had a lot of problems before birth.

Uh, I won't go into all the detail.

The part connecting into my bladder, it was just, it was messed up to be fair.

And at birth had some surgeries with that to fix that.

And what it was doing, it was refluxing urine back into my kidney and causing infection.

That doesn't sound good, mate.

That's why she was on the boat to begin with.

I thought, like, "I don't know what's gonna happen to me." I was declining in kidney function, so I'm like, "If I'm ever gonna go on the cruise, it has to be now."

What Teresa didn't know while enjoying a New Kids on the Block party on the ocean was that her lifeline was also on board.

From The Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.

Fast-forward to 2021.

Teresa is at the doctor because she has a urinary tract infection.

Sounds routine, but in Teresa's family, UTIs or any health issues related to kidneys are scarier.

At this point, Teresa's mother has had polycystic kidney disease, a diagnosis known as PKD, and is on dialysis.

Oh, yes

... where Kody's kidneys-

... where's, the kidneys-

Truly his kidneys

It can be a variety of things.

Pre-renal means the kidney is not getting enough blood flow.

Intrinsic means that the kidney is being damaged.

And post-renal means that the urine can't get out.

Na Pachote arawu samnise nawotwi twemu yayeyeni yabemano elusi ni Kidneys niya na doctors achemo wa bebi adunidi achi okoye transplant.

And he say, Adjobi Edomuno na oyini kidney baku edemanu misenediemninuni niya say.

Na saa ayessika ohinya edi akwe Kidney transplants no aye about four hundred thousand Ghana cedis.

Tichiska no four mi-four billion.

Hmm.

I think a lot of women when they are really struggling with their autoimmune symptoms.

Like I'm just thinking lupus, for example, because that's what I'm in remission from, you know, if you've had Kidney involvement, liver involvement.

You've been in the hospital.

You need to have that, right? Absolutely.

It has a bunch of information about me, has a bunch of information about my journey, has a bunch of information about my family and how and resources and videos on how you can help and how you can help save my life.

The website is Kidney for Phil.

That's F.O.R. Kidney for Phil dot com.

Wow.

You're going through all of that and you still work, work and help other people realize their dreams.

I was I had an epiphany that I needed to because I was going through things mentally and I didn't know it was my body telling me this.

Right.

Kidney disease causes extreme fatigue.

So then I had $7.5 million in my pocket.

In I end- I went to the NIDDK, the National Institute of Animal Health for, uh, kidney disease, all right? To Dr.

Star and his groups, all right? Asking for the first randomized control study in membranous nephropathy done in 30 years in this country, where we had done the pharmacokinetics, the pharmacodynamics, the timelines, the dosing, and we had a biomarker without costing the federal government a single dollar, right? And we asked them to give us $2.5 million.

In other words, $500,000 a year for five years.

Yeah.

Now, of course, they are on, uh, I forgot to mention in the criteria, they are on all supportive therapy, right? So they could be on an ACE inhibitor, ARB, Refluzan, or whatever.

The, uh, and so the, uh, complete remission was defined as uPCR less than .3 gram on a, based on a 24-hour urine collection with stable kidney function, which is defined as GFR of, you know, 85% of baseline or higher.

And so this was and, right? They had to have no proteinuria, sta- stable GFR, and no intercurrent event.