DELAWARE - Kidney failure doesn't discriminate against age. 22-year-old Eric Bennett can attest to that. He has been on the waiting list for a new kidney for almost three years now and is on dialysis until he can find a match.
"I woke up from my sleep gasping for air," Bennett says. "I went to the hospital and they saw that my blood pressure was really high."
That spike in his blood pressure and shortness of breath were all signs that Bennett had End Stage Kidney Disease. He was diagnosed in November 2019, just a few months after he graduated high school and his fiancé had their newborn daughter.
Bennett was rushed to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia to immediately start hemodialysis 3 times a week for 4 and a half hours.
"It was like a port in my chest," he says. "It pulls the blood out, cleans it and puts it back in you, but it really drains the energy out of your body."
Bennett eventually switched to peritoneal dialysis using a catheter in his stomach, which he says he does overnight and feels less.
"Dialysis is keeping me alive and I'm grateful for that, but I want to be able to live a full life so I can be able to see my daughter grow up and graduate."
These health complications have also put a strain on his fiancé Tovah and their daughter Layla.
"I'm just ready to get a kidney so I can start my life," Bennett says. "I mean I'm only 22 and I've got my whole life ahead of me."
Bennett says you do not need to be the same blood type to be his kidney donor. Anyone who wants to donate can sign up for a paired exchange donation. That's when you donate a kidney to someone else who is a match and then Eric would get one in return.
Click here to see if you're qualified to donate your kidney.