Warren woman gives gift of life to boyfriend

Fund-raiser planned to help defray expenses

By Ted Hayes
Posted 9/9/16

Delores Dupras doesn’t want anything extravagant — just a normal, quiet life free of complications and medical fears. She and her boyfriend, Bill Forcier, will reach for that goal later …

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Warren woman gives gift of life to boyfriend

Fund-raiser planned to help defray expenses

Posted

Delores Dupras doesn’t want anything extravagant — just a normal, quiet life free of complications and medical fears. She and her boyfriend, Bill Forcier, will reach for that goal later this month when she donates one of her kidneys to him in an operation at Rhode Island Hospital.

The Warren couple met at the Market Street Pub last April. He remembers her from high school — she graduated Warren High in 1988, he in 1991 — but “I didn’t remember him,” she said Thursday. He grew on her and they’ve become inseparable.

Even before they met, Mr. Forcier was undergoing regular kidney dialysis for the Stage 5 renal failure that hit his body in late 2014, a result of diabetes and associated congestive heart failure. While waiting for a donor kidney Mr. Forcier has continued dialysis three times a week. The sessions last three and a half hours, and the necessity of being on them has had severe impacts on their daily lives. The permanent solution is a kidney transplant, and after looking for a suitable donor for more than a year, fate finally smiled on the couple in late 2015.

“My blood type is O-, which means I’m a universal donor,” Ms. Dupras said. “I thought I would find out about being a donor, and whether I was a match. So I went in to the transplant center (at Rhode Island Hospital) and got tested.”

Doctors did a cross match test to determine if her antibodies were stronger than his. Ms. Dupras hoped for good news, and that’s what she got.

“I couldn’t believe it!”

Mr. Forcier was leery of the result at first, as he didn’t want her to have to make the sacrifice. But she wouldn’t have it.

“Once you know me, once I decide something you’ve got to be hell bent to stop me,” she said. “He’s been two years, just about, on dialysis. Basically it comes down to I want to have a normal life. If it means giving him my kidney, I’m going to give him my kidney.”

Fighting Bill’s illness hasn’t been easy financially, either. Expenses have mounted and will continue to mount as Ms. Dupras leaves work to recover from her surgery. There is also uncertainty over how much rejection drugs will cost, so friends of the couple are pitching in. They have started a gofundme page to help raise funds, so far raising $310 of their $7,000 goal. They will also hold a painting fund-raiser at the Market Street Pub on Wednesday, Sept. 14. It runs from 6:30 to 9 p.m. and the cost is $40.

Ms. Dupras said she is ready now to get on with the surgery and take her next step with Bill. Her hopes are modest, and she sees simpler times ahead:

“I would like to be able to take a vacation” without dialysis, she said. “That’s the unknown about trying to go anywhere and do anything; you have to find a place. It really dictates everything.”

“We’d just like to have a normal life.”

The couple will have their operations Monday, Sept. 19.

Get tested

Ms. Dupras said one of her main hopes in spreading the word about Bill’s kidney transplant is that people who read of it will get tested to see if they are a match for someone out there.

“You don’t have to be a family member,” she said. “Go get checked, and don’t assume because you’re not related, you’re not a match.”

To find out more about being tested as a kidney donor, see www.kidney.org/transplantation/beadonor.

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