West Covina resident continues coaching La Salle basketball despite continuing illness

San Gabriel Valley Tribune | Hillary Smith

Jelani Gardner is on dialysis and needs a fourth kidney.

But that hasn't stopped the 38-year-old West Covina resident from coaching the boys' varsity basketball team at La Salle High School in Pasadena. Nor has it stopped his Academy skill-based basketball training program. It hasn't even stopped him from starting a new travel basketball team, which he held tryouts for on May 18 at La Salle.

Gardner believes everything will work out in the end. But he realizes he is only human.

"God has been good to me," said Gardner who has a wife and three sons. "I've been able to deal with it. This is the second time I've gone through it. It was a dream of mine never to have to go through this again. I went through a trial. But I'm still not out of the woods."

Gardner has had kidney problems since he was first diagnosed with Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) at the age of 19. The rare disease attacks the kidney's filtering system, causing serious scarring and an inability to keep valuable cells and protein in the blood. The most crucial symptom is the leaking of urine into the kidney, which is detrimental to the organ.
Continue reading
______________________________________________________ 
 "You have the power to SAVE lives." 
To register as a donor in California: 
 www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org 
 Outside California: 
 www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.net

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hawthorne woman's liver donation saves cousin, the 'big sister' she never had

Image
North Jersey | Lindy Washburn CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Jennifer Carrino, left, and cousin Nina Walsh showing off their surgery scars. Nina donated a portion of her liver to her older cousin, likely saving her life. Over the last year, Jennifer Carrino had come back from the brink of death, survived internal bleeding and spent weeks in intensive care. Then came the hard part: asking her cousin for a part of her liver. In April, doctors told Jennifer that without a transplant she probably had a year to live. Jennifer, 37, was already on transplant waiting lists in two states, but it was going to take too long, they said. She needed to think about a living donor. Jennifer turned to her younger cousin, Nina Walsh, a slip of a woman with an outsized sense of generosity. She asked her to consider giving up part of her healthy liver. The procedure, pioneered 20 years ago, pushes the ethical boundaries of medicine because it goes against a basic tenet of medicine to “first do no ha...
Read more

Six Years Running: Marathon Team Races To Raise Organ Donation Awareness

Image
The members of Spare Parts 6, a relay team in this year's Vermont City Marathon, are running to raise awareness about organ donation. The team is part of the Transplant Donor Network, and it's the sixth year the network has had a team run the marathon They range in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-sixties. Their ranks include teachers, physicians, administrators and a former state commissioner.  Together, they make up the team Spare Parts 6 in this year’s Vermont City Marathon, and they are running for a cause: to raise awareness of organ and tissue donation throughout the state. The five relay members — Dr. Harry Chen, Dawn Bissonnette, Shaina Kaye, Dr. Bridgett Marroquin and Jean DeMaroney — are part of the Transplant Donor Network (TDN), which is affiliated with the University of Vermont Medical Center. Bissonnette and DeMaroney are transplant recipients. The team wears bright fluorescent yellow shirts with “Donate Life” emblazoned across the front, ...
Read more

AUSSIE SURGEONS HOPE TO PERFORM FIRST STOMACH TRANSPLANT

Image
News 7 Melbourne | Karen O'Sullivan FIRST ON 7: Surgeons who pioneered liver transplants 25 years ago are now setting their sights on performing Australia's first stomach transplant. Professor Bob Jones, who has performed hundreds of operations, says he still believes they are a miracle. Renee Cowton was a scared ten-year-old when she became the first child liver transplant recipient in Australia. "I knew it was huge and I knew that death could happen if it didn't work," she said. Surgeon, Professor Jones from the Austin Hospital admits 25 years ago the risks were high. "We sought of thought we knew what we were doing, and we were very lucky we got away with it," Jones said. "We do it a lot better now." The operation has since been refined and thousands of lives have been saved. Three years ago Professor Jones performed the first intestinal transplant, now he is preparing for what will be the country's first stomach transplant Twenty-three-...
Read more