Gift of Life: Kidney transplant enables retired military veteran to continue life of service

BALA CYNWYD, Pa. (WPVI) -- Register as a Gift of Life donor HERE.

With more than 5,000 people are on the local transplant waiting list, every organ is precious. For those needing kidneys, the wait can be five years or more.

For Vada Conant, it was eight years.

"This building has been here since 1919," she explains, showing Action News around the log cabin.

Service has been Vada's life - in the Air Force, then Army, then nursing.

Now, she's also commander of an historic American Legion, Vandiver-Moylan Post 355 in Bala Cynwyd, Montgomery County.

"This is a propeller from an actual aircraft," she explains.

At 22, Vada developed high blood pressure, which was hard to control on remote deployments.

"I had meds, but no one monitored my blood pressure," she says. "I'd complain of being dizzy, and they'd be like - 'It's 98 degrees, You'll be fine. Drink some water'.''

And at times, she took seven medications.

"All these years, my kidneys have been beaten up by that high pressure," Vada notes.

After she retired from the military in the 1990s, she says doctors never informed her of the deterioration of her kidneys. It was the days before patients themselves could access test results.

"She didn't call me, so I assumed it was fine," she notes.

By 2018, Vada was listed for transplant and went on dialysis. It was a dark, isolating time.

"You're there three days a week, four hours at a time," she says of time at a dialysis center. "Several of the patients expired while I was there."

Still, Vada kept up work on her masters degree, bringing an iPad, books, and phone to dialysis. Even with home dialysis, she missed a lot of family and community life.

"My attendance at synagogue was affected. My attendance for Gift of Life presentations, my attendance at (American) Legion," she recalls.

A complication scuttled her first transplant offer.

"Then I didn't hear anything more for five years, six years," Vada says.

But Gift of Life CEO Rick Hasz says Vada still helped promote organ donation.

"She wasn't just spreading the word for herself, but really for all the people that were, that she saw on dialysis," Hasz says.

And 80% of the 5,000 awaiting transplants in our area are waiting for kidneys.

Hasz says more living donors can help, along with reducing high blood pressure and diabetes, which are two prime causes of kidney disease.

But those don't erase the need for registered organ donors.

Last year, just before becoming post commander, Vada's phone rang.

"August 31st at 6:30, Labor Day weekend, and my transplant was at midnight," she remembers.

Vada awoke early the next morning, with more energy than she'd had in years. And a year later, she's still raising donor awareness.

Register as a Gift of Life donor HERE.