Nicolé Thompson donated a kidney to her husband Constantine five days after their wedding in 2011. He has polycystic kidney disease (PKD), and his father died after 10 years on dialysis. Fifteen years later, they're both doing well.

Nicolé is a Morphus customer, life coach, and professional singer, and her story is one of the most interesting conversations we've had on the show. She walks Andrea through living donor testing, surgery day (including a nurse who mistook her husband for a stranger), her recovery, and what life after a transplant looks like for him. Then she talks about the part so many of us know: when perimenopause arrived in 2020, she blamed her anxiety and fatigue on COVID, stress, and having one kidney.

What you'll learn:
- What living kidney donor testing actually involves
- What recovery felt like after donating a kidney
- What polycystic kidney disease is and why it runs in families
- Why kidney transplant patients avoid grapefruit
- Why perimenopause anxiety and fatigue are so easy to blame on something else

Chapters:
2:00 A kidney donation love story
5:18 Her fiancé's polycystic kidney disease diagnosis
7:43 Living kidney donor testing: what really happens
13:56 Married 5 days before the kidney transplant
19:33 Kidney donor recovery: the first 6 weeks
21:17 What is polycystic kidney disease (PKD)?
23:23 Life after a kidney transplant: meds, grapefruit, colds
29:01 One kidney and perimenopause: anxiety, fatigue, insulin resistance
32:39 How kidney donation has changed, and would she do it again?
40:19 Her message if organ donation scares you

Take our new research survey, Perimenopause & Menopause Across Ethnicities: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeETDntSjZxIpJ8smhR8n6RoOJVFqTPkSUnfP_oP4nKW_P4Hw/viewform

This episode shares one person's experience and is not medical advice.

Send us Fan Mail

💌 FREE FRIDAY EMAIL FROM ANDREA
What she's learning about perimenopause and menopause, plus a recipe:
https://wearemorphus.com/pages/subscribe?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=Subscribe&utm_campaign=Podcast&utm_content=footer-top

📖 NOURISHING MENOPAUSE, Andrea's book (affiliate links)
US: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk
Canada: https://amzn.to/4xaREJK

💊 Shop Morphus: https://wearemorphus.com/collections/all
📰 As seen in USA Today: https://bit.ly/43nrMwO
✅ Fill out our surveys: https://bit.ly/4jcVuLh

📲 FOLLOW US
Instagram and TikTok: @wearemorphus | @andreadonsky
Facebook: /wearemorphus

Not medical advice. Always talk to your healthcare provider. Morphus may earn a commission on affiliate links.