Son donates kidney, saves mother’s life

Rosa Olivares is happy to be alive.

Her kidneys gave out earlier this year and her son Felipe stepped up and donated one of his.

“They said I was a perfect match, so I said ‘okay, let’s do it,’” Felipe Olivares said about donating a kidney to his mother.

Felipe had to take two months off from his job as a Cameron County detention officer for the procedure and recovery.  His mother Rosa is grateful to see another day and for her son’s sacrifice.

“Now I feel good, happy, because I’m alive,” Rosa said in Spanish.  ”It hurt, it hurt to see him there, very hard.”

It all worked out fine because Felipe was a great fit.  A kidney going from the 170-lb. officer to the 130-lb. home provider is the ideal pairing, especially when they’re direct relatives.

“Rosa received a kidney from her son who’s a male, and a big person, muscular person, and so that kidney is really the perfect kidney,” said Dr. Mourad Alsabbagh, who oversaw the Olivares’ procedure and recovery.

Rosa Olivares was lucky that her son Felipe was such a good match. But for hundreds of people on the kidney transplant wait list, it will be years before they find their match.

Rosa’s high blood pressure led to the kidney failure.  She said before the transplant, she would eat whenever she could.  The 48-year-old didn’t live a healthy lifestyle.  She used to weigh more than Felipe. Now she’s about sixty pounds lighter.

“One day I would wake up fine and I would think, I need to take advantage of the day since I woke up well,” Rosa said in Spanish. “Today I’m hungry.  And I would take advantage of the day because I might not have another one.”

Half the patients that Dr. Alsabbagh sees have either hypertension or diabetes; the two leading causes of kidney failure.

It’s a big problem in the Rio Grande Valley.

Dr. Alsabbagh asks that everybody become a donor.  Make sure the pink heart on your driver’s license says your organs can go to somebody in need, he says, so hopefully others have a chance, like Rosa.