Sisters Amaris and Dominique Elston shared everything as children. Today, they also share a kidney after a transplant procedure. Amaris donated a kidney to Dominique after sisters were told that Dominique had focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a chronic kidney disease that quickly progressed to failure of the kidneys.
Denise Elston, their mother, told CBS News, “I told Amaris ‘Dominique is in kidney failure. Her kidney function was at 19%, and she’s going to need a kidney transplant eventually. Thirty seconds later, Amaris said, ‘Can I give her one?'”
However, given her family’s history of kidney failure, Amaris, who was then applying for medical school, was unclear about her eligibility to donate.
Dominique did not want to ruin her older sister’s educational accomplishments but when her condition deteriorated and her kidney function decreased to 5% despite dialysis treatments, Amaris got tested without her sister’s knowledge and discovered she was a match.
In the U.S., about 140,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, with the average American waiting about five years for a kidney donation through the waiting list. It’s worse for Blacks, who are also disproportionately represented on the waiting list, according to health experts.
These factors ran through Amari’s head and she decided to spare her sister all that agony. To ensure that the donor and recipient are compatible, interested family members undergo a series of preliminary tests, according to Dr. Kelly Birdwell, medical director of kidney transplantation at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not involved in the Elston sisters’ treatment. This is followed by a longer evaluation to ensure that the donation would not jeopardize the life of the potential donor. One aspect of the evaluation is determining whether the possible donor is healthy. After everything is completed, the surgery is planned.
By the time these processes were done, Amaris had completed her first semester of medical school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In December 2018, the Elston sisters went to the University of Vanderbilt’s Transplant Center for the surgeries.
Dominique’s surgery took almost three hours that same day, after Amari’s nearly two-hour procedure. Even though Amaris was in a lot of pain following the surgery, she said that seeing her younger sister “look like a whole new person in less than 24 hours” gave her the reassurance she needed to know that her choice was worth the cost.
Dominique was given a second chance at life and was able to pursue a profession in medicine thanks to Amari’s gift.
Dominique earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the UAB School of Nursing in 2024, two years after Amaris had graduated from UAB’s Heersink School of Medicine.
The younger sister told the outlet, “After going through what we went through, it was kind of like a calling for me to go into (nursing). It wasn’t really something I had to think about. I felt like it was something that was meant for me.”
Currently practicing neurology, the two sisters are the first in their family to pursue careers in medicine. Amaris is a neurology resident at the Medical University of South Carolina, whereas Dominique works as a nurse in the neurology intensive care unit at UAB.
Amaris stated, “It’s been fun having somebody that is with you through everything, because if you want to talk about the bad parts, the good parts, you can. It feels good to know that there’s somebody right beside you that can understand how you feel and what you’re going through. We’ve been each other’s best friends amid some of our darkest moments, so this is just another journey that we’re on together.”
Even though the sisters are now over 400 miles apart, their relationship is still stronger than it has ever been.
