Local Woman Steps Up For Kidney Cure

Allegra Tiver. Gloucester Times, NJ: September 24, 2006.

Michele Copeland has spent four hours, three times a week for the past few years receiving treatment for a rare and debilitating kidney condition known as FSGS, or focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, diagnosed following her senior year at Clearview Regional High School.

But somehow, the 26-year-old has found time, between the 2- disease-related surgeries she as endured, to earn a degree in hotel and restaurant management and acquire her real estate license – not to mention embarking on a fundraising effort to help find a cure. “I’m the type of person, I don’t like to mope, and it’s not good anyways,” Copeland said, “It’s just my personality.”

The Walk to Save Kidneys & to Save Lives – sponsored by Cherry Hill-based South Jersey Vascular Institute and benefiting the NephCure Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to discover the cause of FSGS [and Nephrotic Syndrome], improve treatment and find a cure – is scheduled for Sunday Oct. 1 at Chestnut Branch Park in Mantua Township.

Not much is known about the disease, said Copeland who failed to respond to initial steroid treatments. She currently takes seven medications daily and continues her regimen of hemodialysis – she was previously on peritoneal dialysis during the night, until she developed an infection – to filter out the was that her damaged kidneys cannot.

Because the aggressive disease instantly attacked a kidney Copeland received from her mother Dori two years ago, doctors recommend that she receive no further transplants until science ran figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Now living at home and working full-time as a real estate agent at Century 21 Hughes-Riggs in Mullica Hill, Copeland said her strong support system gets her through. “My mom and my brother and my grandmom have been always there for me – that’s what makes it easier. Every Wednesday, after dialysis, my brother and I meet up with friends at the Hollywood Diner.”

While most people have been understanding, Copeland said it is frustrating that some assume because she looks fine, she must not be that ill. The truth is, she sometimes pulls her car over on the side of the road to get sick, and experiences major fatigue from anemia, or a lack of red blood cells, caused by her FSGS.

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