By Jack Perry/Providence Journal
Dr. Stephanie Krusz has dedicated her adult life to healing the ill and injured, treating 20 patients a day in a Cranston primary-care practice.
But she went beyond even that high calling on Sept. 7 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston when she gave one of her kidneys to the brother of a close friend.
Krusz’s gift probably saved the life of Glen Rodrigues, a gym owner in Lynn, Massachusetts, who spent two years on dialysis because of kidney failure, including 30 days while he was in a coma after contracting COVID-19.
“She is a top doctor. A lot of people say they can’t (become kidney donors) because they don’t have the time. She’s very, very busy. If she can do it, I think anyone can,” Glen Rodrigues’s sister Brenda said of her friend Krusz.
Brenda feared her brother would die. “For him to be alive today, he’s got a purpose,” said Brenda, a Cranston resident. “His story is so unbelievable. It’s about hope and never giving up.”
Krusz and Brenda have been friends for “many years. Thank God I have her,” Brenda said. Both women are runners, and they train together. Brenda shared her brother’s story with Krusz. Glen is a bodybuilder and professional trainer, and his kidney problems were detected in 2013, the result of high blood pressure. By 2019, it became clear he’d need a new kidney, and in October 2020, he went on dialysis, the process of removing waste products and excessive fluid from the blood
On three days each week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday — Glen, 51, spent four hours a day on dialysis. Sundays were the worst, he said, because he’d have gone 48 hours without having his blood cleaned, and the toxins would build up.
“He wasn’t living,” Brenda said. “He was a mess.”
“I didn’t urinate for two years,” Glen said.
“It was a battle,” he said.
Fifteen friends and family members, including his fiancee, Krystal Patch, submitted information to determine if they could provide a matching kidney. All were rejected, for one reason or another.