Pasadena Mom Tries Novel Approach to Find Kidney for Her Daughter

The family of a Pasadena woman has tried seemingly every means to find a matching kidney donor for her, and now the search has gone viral. After the mother of 29 year-old Jenna Franks decided to paint a sign on the family SUV saying “Daughter Needs a Kidney Type O,” the inventive strategy has swept social media.

Twitter user Tatum Bateman saw the sign and tweeted it with the message, “This honestly needs to go viral.”

Since that time and more than 8,000 retweets later, the picture has had more than 700,000 views, and the Franks family has received at least 25 offers from people saying they are willing to be tested for a possible match.

Jenna Franks was diagnosed with a rare urological disease that destroyed her kidneys when she was 15. She began dialysis as a high school senior and it went on for three years until she received a kidney transplant when she was 20.

After seven years, her body rejected the kidney, and only dialysis has kept her alive, spending 12 hours per day devoted to the procedure.

“My life pretty much revolves around my illness,” Franks tells TV station KNBC4.

Franks’ mother Karol has been using Facebook, Craigslist, YouTube and nearly all social media in hopes of finding a proper match. Karol herself cannot be a donor because of a heart problem.

“I have a heart valve problem which keeps me from donating, which just kills me,” Karol Franks on a Facebook page created for her daughter’s search for a kidney. “I wish I could make life easier for her. She is very courageous and never complains, but life on dialysis is not easy.”

After the tweet was posted, Karol was shocked at what happened.

“My phone kept going – bing! Bing! Bing!” Karol told KNBC4. “And I said, ‘Look at this. These people are writing because of that sign.’ ”

The family now has renewed hopes that a match will come soon.

To learn more about Jenna Franks and her search, visit her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/WantedKidneyDonor, or send an email to Kidney4Jenna@gmail.com.