“I didn’t want any frills; I wanted to keep it simple and it was perfect,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
The procedure was ultimately successful, giving way to Mylaen’s clean bill of health — and the long-awaited chance at a new life.
The twist of fate was something Jim and Mylaen never would’ve imagined when they wed in 1991. During Mylaen’s first pregnancy with their son Jimmy Jr., now 32, she was diagnosed with preeclampsia, which resulted in high blood pressure that later led to kidney disease.
During their 17-year marriage, Mylaen and Jim — who met working at a Daytona Beach, Fla., car dealership and later opened the Belleview Auto Salvage junkyard together — also welcomed daughter Sami, now 30, before Jim’s struggles with alcoholism finally caused the couple to divorce in 2008.
“I wasn’t abusive, but I was a very functional, bad alcoholic,” admits Jim. “She just couldn’t take it.”
“In the beginning, it was hard to get along, but being there for our children was the most important thing,” adds Mylaen, whose kidney disease worsened over time, before taking a serious turn in the past two years. “I was very scared. In the last year and a half, everything started going downhill really fast. I knew my time was limited.”
With her support, Jim has now been sober for more than 10 years. “She saved my life too,” Jim says. “I don’t know if I’d still be here if I hadn’t quit drinking.”
“She was totally pale, her eyes were dark,” recalls Jim. “She was really sick, and the doctor said she would have gone on dialysis anytime if she didn’t get a kidney quick. But somehow it just all worked out.”
Within hours of the surgery, Mylaen was showing signs of improvement. “I felt like I was alive again. Overnight I felt like a totally new person,” she recalled.
Staffers later allowed the women to see one another in Mylaen’s hospital room, where they shared an emotional moment of joy and relief.
“We were laughing so hard, our incisions hurt,” says Mylaen.
“Neither one of us has sisters and now we’re connected forever,” says Mylaen, who now works at a car dealership and loves spending time with her son, daughter and two grandkids. “She’s given me all I could have wanted.”
“Giving her my kidney did more for me than it did for her — if you can believe that,” she says. “I knew that we were both going to go into the hospital and she was going to come home with one of my kidneys. And now we’re both going to live happily ever after, raising our grandkids.”
Those interested in becoming a living organ donor can learn more informationhere.
source: people.com
