Overview
- Phillips announced on Instagram that she is recovering after a successful transplant and posted photos and video showing early mobility and low reported pain at about five days after surgery.
- Her brother, Aron Wilson, donated into a paired kidney-exchange chain and a voucher program matched Phillips with a compatible living donor, a process that lets an incompatible donor give to one patient while arranging a compatible kidney for the intended recipient.
- This is Phillips’s second transplant after a 2017 graft failed following complications from the BK virus, and she had been hospitalized and on dialysis while seeking a new living donor.
- She credited Dr. Jeffrey Veale and UCLA Health for a surgical approach that spared muscle cuts, which she said reduced pain and sped early recovery, and she publicly thanked hospital staff and donors.
- The transplant shortens Phillips’s expected time on dialysis and restores her ability to care for her 12-year-old daughter, and her case highlights how paired-exchange and voucher programs expand options for patients with difficult antibody profiles.