It may be a big ask, but the reward is bigger.

Haley Arruda is a 30 year-old Bristol resident and mother to Lylah, an almost-9-year-old 3rd grade student at Colt Andrews School. When she worked, she was a pharmacy technician at Walgreen’s and a licensed CNA who cared for mentally disabled adults. She has not worked in almost 5 years — about the same amount of time she has been on dialysis.

Lylah was born when Haley was 22. A year later at 23 she got sick — very, very sick. The diagnois was cryoglobulinemia, a very rare condition in which atypical blood proteins called cryoglobulins clump together when they get cold. These clumps can block blood flow, cause inflammation, and damage the skin, joints, nerves, kidneys and other organs.

“I was in the hospital from 2023 to 2025, in and out for months on end,” she said. “Chemotherapy got rid of it, but the damage was done. It attacks your major organs, your liver. I had my spleen removed. I was on the verge of cirrhosis, and then my kidneys reached the point of no turning back.

“They don’t know how I got it. It’s linked to hepatitis B or C or needle use but none of those apply. They aren’t even sure if it’s autoimmune or a blood disorder.”

Indeed, medicine still has much to learn about cryoglobulinemia. It can be linked to infections, certain blood conditions and cancers, and autoimmune diseases, including multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Sjogren disease, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes no cause is found.

Dialysis has been keeping Hayley alive for the past 5 years; thanks to a recent weight loss, she is going active on the waiting list for a transplant. Thankfully her dialysis start date means she will not be launching at the back of the list, but as hopeful as she is, at her age she’s very aware that this is not a one-and-done proposition.

“I’m looking for a live donor,” she said. “The kidneys from cadavers don’t last as long live ones do.”

Indeed, results may very, but on average patients are told to expect good function of about 10 years from a cadaver kidney but 20 years from a live donor. Over the course of a typical life expectancy for a 30 year old woman, that’s a lot of kidneys.

It’s not just Haley’s health that has suffered. “I missed out on my twenties,” she said. When she was not sick in the hospital she was making up for lost time with Lylah. A single parent, Haley gets some help from her mother who takes Lylah once a week and helps tidy they apartment but beyond that Haley doesn’t have a very wide support system. She lives in subsidized housing and from SSDI paycheck to paycheck. “I get help from the state,” she said. “It’s not enough, but I make it happen.” The day she sat for this interview she was awaiting the next paycheck before grocery shopping.

Haley keeps going — for Lylah — doing her best to give her daughter great childhood memories. She says that when she is older and “things” calm down she won’t feel so anxious about the future, but the pressure of going through this with a young dependent child is extreme, and readable between the lines of a facebook post from July.

“A kidney transplant is my best chance at more time, better health, and being the mom my daughter deserves and being the person I'm meant to be,” she wrote.

“Today, I'm asking for something that feels impossible to ask for. I'm searching for a living kidney donor. Blood type: O. I'm not asking anyone to make a decision today. I'm simply asking you to learn more, share my story, or keep me in your prayers. You never know who might see this and decide they want to help.”

Living kidney donation involves a rigorous testing procedure. Not only does the kidney need to be a match, doctors need to be confident that first, your donation will do you no harm — in fact donors have their own medical team advocating for their welfare throughout the process. If you are not a direct match for the person to whom you hope to donate, there are reciprocal programs that will ensure your person is prioritized with the next match.

If you'd like to learn more about the process, visit https://www.brownhealth.org/be-well/organ-donation-kidney-transplant-and-need-living-donors. If you are interested in becoming a living donor for Haley, you can find her on Facebook or send an email to the address under the byline of this article.