Massapequa Mom Battling Renal Failure Again Pleads for a Living Kidney Donor

A Massapequa woman whose sister gave her a kidney in 2019 is now back on the transplant list and asking strangers to consider donating one of their own. Caryn Berge says she is in renal failure after a hospital stay for pneumonia in 2022 led to sepsis, and her doctors believe that infection contributed to her transplanted kidney beginning to fail.

Berge was placed on a ventilator after developing pneumonia-related sepsis in 2022, according to News12 Long Island. She was also diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Her first kidney came from her sister seven years ago, but the same outlet reports she has now been told she needs to return to the transplant list.

A Years-Long Wait Versus a Living Donor

Berge estimates that the wait for a deceased-donor kidney could stretch five to seven years, the report notes. A living donor could allow her to receive a transplant substantially sooner and may let her avoid dialysis altogether. She has already completed all of the necessary testing required for a transplant, according to the same account, and is now focused entirely on finding a match.

Per Berge, kidney donation requires the prospective donor to be in good health. She has shared that she has blood type A+ and previously survived cervical cancer, whose treatments — including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy — severely damaged her kidneys before her first transplant, according to a campaign statement posted to Facebook in June. Medical guidance published by Healthline notes that advanced cervical cancer and its treatments, such as pelvic radiation and chemotherapy, can cause severe kidney damage through ureteral obstruction or nephrotoxicity that frequently progresses to chronic kidney disease.

What Berge Hopes For

Berge says she hopes to return to work and spend more time with her family. She has said she wants to see her great nieces and nephews grow up. Potential donors can reach her directly at [email protected] or visit www.columbiakidneytransplant.com to learn more about becoming a living donor through Columbia's program.

The Broader Shortage Behind Her Search

Berge's appeal reflects a shortage playing out across New York. The New York State Department of Health reported in October 2025 that roughly 7,000 New Yorkers were actively waiting for a kidney transplant, while 690 patients across the state died or were removed from waiting lists in 2024 because they had become too sick to undergo transplantation. Nationally, more than 103,200 Americans are on the organ transplant waiting list, with over 92,000 of them waiting specifically for a kidney, according to data updated in April 2026 by Help Hope Live and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

Living donation carries clear clinical advantages over waiting for a deceased donor. Guidelines from the Columbia University Department of Surgery state that 97% of living-donor kidneys function immediately upon transplantation, compared with just 50% to 60% of deceased-donor kidneys. Even for second transplants like the one Berge needs, clinical research published on PubMed in September 2022 found that living-donor kidneys achieve five-year patient survival rates of 96% and ten-year survival rates of 93%, outcomes nearly identical to first-time living-donor transplants.

New Protections Aim to Ease Donors' Fears

State and federal measures have emerged in recent years to lower the financial and legal barriers that keep would-be donors from stepping forward. New York launched a Living Donor Support Program in October 2025 that provides up to $14,000 in reimbursements for lost wages, travel, and dependent care to residents who donate a kidney to another New Yorker, the state health department says. That builds on New York's 2018 Living Donor Protection Act, which the National Kidney Foundation notes bars health, life, and accident insurers from discriminating against living organ donors and covers organ donation under the state's Paid Family Leave framework.

At the federal level, U.S. Representatives Don Bacon and Jerrold Nadler reintroduced the Living Donor Protection Act package in July 2025, aiming to stop life, disability, and long-term care insurers from denying coverage or raising premiums for living donors while guaranteeing job protection under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Separately, the National Kidney Registry's Donor Shield program offers donors in paired exchanges up to four weeks of lost-wage reimbursement capped at $1,500 per week, plus up to $2,000 in travel and lodging coverage, according to Explore Transplant.

Berge's search echoes other recent public appeals for living donors, including a Nassau County teen's kidney search reported by Hoodline earlier this year. For now, she is hoping someone in good health and willing to be tested will come forward so she can get off the years-long deceased-donor list and back to the life she is fighting to hold onto.