For 18-year-old Brooke Bianchi of Fall River, life has been one challenge after another.
After 17 years of strength, resilience, and faith, her family is once again facing the unthinkable — a fight to save her life.
Brooke’s mother, Nicole Souza, donated her own kidney to her daughter when Brooke was just 18 months old. That gift gave Brooke a childhood she might never have had otherwise. Doctors warned it would likely last 15 to 20 years. Heartbreakingly, that time has now come.
A Lifetime of Fighting
“When she was born, we already knew she was going to need help,” Nicole said. “She only had one kidney, and it was functioning less than 10 percent at birth. She needed dialysis right away to survive.”
For the first 18 months of her life, Nicole and Brooke’s father learned to hook their newborn up to a dialysis machine every night for 12 hours, praying she’d grow strong enough to receive a transplant. In October of 2008, that miracle came: Nicole became her daughter’s donor…