There is a new digital billboard campaign you may have noticed this week during your holiday travels looking for a living kidney donor. The Raymond family is used to helping others, but tonight with the help of a dozen new billboards, they’re hoping to find a live kidney donor to save Kelly Raymond’s life.
Kelly Raymond told Boston 25 News, “We’re desperate to get a kidney, I’m just feeling so tired all the time and weak.”
The Raymond family of Beverly needs your help. “We’re hoping to find that one person that would be willing to donate. please just help, it’s been really hard,” Kelly Raymond told Boston 25 News.
She’s the Kelly featured in 12 brand new findkellyakidney.com billboards across New England, with her son Christopher and husband Dave, both Hamilton firefighters and EMTs at her side.
“We’re life partners, high school sweethearts. it’s tough, it’s a change of lifestyle. it’s something we have to live with every single day,” Hamilton Fire Lt. Dave Raymond told Boston 25 News.
Kelly’s kidneys are shutting down and time is running out for the type 1 diabetic and leg amputee
“So getting a kidney transplant we’d go from dialysis 4-5 times a day 7 days a week to taking a single pill at 7 in the morning, and a single pill at 7 at night, and that’s all she would have to take and one living donor kidney would last Kelly the rest of her life,” Lt. Dave Raymond added.
Dave reached out to clear channel who responded in minutes ready to help launch the billboards at barely any cost. they’re hoping holiday travelers will stay in the spirit and head to findkellyakidney.com and sign up as a possible donor.
“It’s finding the person who’s willing to take that chance, whose willing to do the paperwork, willing to see if they qualify. and some people say I’m not healthy enough to donate so what can I do? Well, get the word out for us, put it on your Facebook page.”
The couple is also working with a new nationwide non-profit, emsgiveslife.org
“Dave said to me, you know I’ve been in a helping position my whole life, I’m a firefighter, I’m an EMT, my son followed in my footsteps, we’re a civic-minded family. I can’t save my own wife,” Christine Fiechter, executive director of emsgiveslife.org told Boston 25 news.
A deceased donor can sometimes take years, that’s why they’re looking for living donors.
Christine Fiechter connects with the national kidney registry.
“They have a nationwide network of 100 member centers they make best matches, so if not a direct match for Kelly which is entirely possible, but is healthy enough to be a kidney donor, they can donate on her behalf so she gets a voucher that takes her off that five to the seven-year deceased donor waiting list and moves her to a much better-matched system for a kidney likely in less than a year.”
Kelly Raymond added, “If I get a kidney 1000 percent of us are going to help others to go down the same path we did. I can’t thank them enough.
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