After 6-yr wait for kidney, woman dies, turns donor

MUMBAI: Thane resident Asha Bhalerao’s (62) family had seen her six-year-long struggle to live with kidney failure all too closely. So, when she started slipping away on Tuesday after suffering an intracranial bleed a day before, they knew exactly what to do.

Bhalerao’s family donated her liver to save the life of a 69-year-old woman who had been waiting for an organ for nearly a year. After Bhalerao was declared brain dead on Thursday, they donated her skin and corneas too. The family believes she would have approved of the donation. “She lived the pain herself for every single day. She hoped to get an organ but didn’t live to undergo that transplant,” said her sister Meena Wagh.

A mother of two sons, Bhalerao is suspected to have suffered an intracranial bleed on Monday soon after returning home from her dialysis that she needed thrice a week. The family rushed her to Jupiter Hospital, where she had been undergoing dialysis since 2013.

The next day doctors had informed the family that she could suffer brain death. Wagh said she started discussing the possibility of organ donation . “We were all willing to donate her organs, but we also hoped for a miracle, so we didn’t allow doctors to start the brain death certification till Thursday,” she said. The family had even consented to donate her heart, but it couldn’t be transplanted.