HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — Tucked in the corner next to her bed is a machine that keeps Tara Lonberger alive. She hooks up to at home dialysis each night before bed and it cleans her blood while she sleeps.
“And then I’ll wake up and it’ll be done and I unhook,” Tara Lonberger said.
She makes it sound so simple, but her life is anything but that.
“She was in denial for a long time,” husband Steve Lonberger said.
Tara Lonberger has a genetic disease called Alport Syndrome that destroys kidney function. Two of her three adult sons also have it, and all of them will eventually need a kidney transplant.
“That’s a hard situation, especially when you’re a mom and you cannot — I can’t give them my kidney. They can’t give me their kidney,” she said. “So it’s like, you know, you’re kind of almost up a creek without a paddle.”
To make matters worse, Tara Lonberger was born with only one kidney.
“They are pushing for a living donor,” Steve Lonberger said. “Tara kind of plays it down. But that doctor on Monday, he said you need to find her a living donor because the alternative” is to wait for someone to die and donate an organ, but she has type O blood, which is the hardest to match.
That means she may have to wait up to five years for a transplant, over which time she would get sicker while caring for her son with autism and raising her niece and nephew.
“We’re so blessed to even be able to have them,” Tara Lonberger said. “They’ve made this family stronger.”
The kids moved in two years ago — after her sister died.
In the chaos of their family life, Steve Lonberger is the rock.
“I tell her all the time, I don’t want you to leave me with all this,” he said, laughing.
He’s now working non-stop to find a kidney for Tara.
Another twist in the ringer they’ve already been put through enough.
How to help
Find out if you’re a match and consider donating a kidney. You can start by filling out Sentara’s donor screening here. Even if you’re not a match for Tara Lonberger, your kidney can be entered into a paired exchange program, which means it would go to another patient and then Tara Lonberger may get her match from somewhere else, often in months instead of years.
