Bishopville woman develops kidney disease after donation

Doctors at Johns Hopkins keep telling Emilee Snader there is no genetic component to the kidney disease that will, at best, keep her on daily handfuls of pills for the rest of her life, but she doesn’t really believe them.

Emilee, at the beginning of November, was a reasonably healthy woman just beginning the second trimester of her second pregnancy. A sinus infection followed by a flu-like illness followed by strep throat resulted in Rapidly Progressive Glomerulonephritis, a subset of glomerulonephritis and a familiar disease to Snader. Six years ago, her sister Tracy was diagnosed with Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis, which resulted in Snader donating a kidney to her sibling. Snader said the doctors told her there was a one percent chance of this happening within a family.

“There’s just so much they don’t understand about this disease,” she said. The coincidence, she maintains, doesn’t bear scrutiny.

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