The Kidney Collective: "We Were Learning It As We Were Living It"

Naomi DeBerry: It impacts kids in a big way. And I think my parents are kind of scared to tell me. Like my mom said, they wanted me to still have a childhood. But I do believe that kids, we we notice things when something is off. We can notice that things around us are happening and that we can trust kids to be resilient. We we have to, because we everybody has to go through something hard in life. And whether it's earlier in life or it's later, somebody's gonna have to go through something.

LaVarne Burton: Hello, I'm LaVarne Burton.

Tamara Ruggiero: I'm Tamara Ruggiero.

Mike Spigler: And I'm Mike Spigler.

LaVarne Burton: Welcome to season three of the American Kidney Fund's podcast, The Kidney Collective, which gives an intimate voice to the many facets of living with kidney disease.

Tamara Ruggiero: This season, we're exploring the mental health aspects of living with kidney disease.

Mike Spigler: Over the next few months, we'll be talking with members of the kidney community about how each part of the kidney disease journey, from diagnosis to transplant, can impact mental health.

LaVarne Burton: Join us for these candid conversations, which offer both information and inspiration.

Mike Spigler: Today's guests are a mother-daughter duo, Kelly Harris-DeBerry and her daughter Naomi DeBerry. Kelly's husband and Naomi's father, Jarvis, was diagnosed with kidney failure and began doing home dialysis treatments in 2019. In February 2020, he received a new kidney from a living donor. Naomi was only seven years old when he received his transplant and says that she did not fully understand what her father was going through.

Tamara Ruggiero: Naomi was inspired by her family's experience navigating her father's kidney disease journey to write a book, My Daddy Needs a Gift, which was published in 2024. She and Kelly have been raising awareness about organ transplantation. And for her efforts, Naomi was named one of Time Magazine's Girls of the Year for 2025. She now has ambitions to be a transplant surgeon. Welcome, Kelly and Naomi. Naomi, you are a very impressive 13-year-old. What do you do for fun when you're not writing?

Naomi DeBerry: When I'm not writing or doing schoolwork, I like to relax. I like to watch TV. I love reading, the side of writing. I was just at the library yesterday returning and picking up some new books. So I do enjoy reading. That's one of my hobbies.

Tamara Ruggiero: And your website says you are a LEGO guru. So we wanted to ask you, what is your favorite build that you've done?

Naomi DeBerry: My favorite build that I've done is my PAC-MAN set. And it's kind of like the arcade style, but it's a smaller one. And it's built as you if you were actually playing it. And it has the joystick, and you can actually play it. And they have the button where you can like insert 25 cents and it lights up. So I love LEGOs. Yeah, that's another one of my hobbies I love to do.

Mike Spigler: Awesome. Well, Kelly, I'd love to just talk to you first just about Jarvis's diagnosis, but first off, just get to know you and Jarvis a little bit more. How long have you and Jarvis been together?

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: We will be married for 18 years in October, and he was diagnosed the second year of our marriage. So we have multiple stories inside of the kidney journey. Naomi is usually the person out front, you know, with it. But I've had the opportunity to talk to particularly younger couples who are often just in a state of shock from a diagnosis. And so I've been there with that, in both the learning curve of being married and the shock of a major illness entering your newlywed era. So depending on where we are, we kind of collide our stories together. Myself from a younger married woman, a wife, what it means to be a caretaker, a mom, and then Naomi often has her story as well. My husband, ironically, he doesn't talk about it as much publicly. He will do different things with us. It's funny because it seems like Naomi and I are kind of on the road with the advocacy. But I think also because he works and also because it's so close to him, he still has a hard time just sharing everything with the public. And so we're here to kind of fill some of those gaps.

Mike Spigler: Yeah, and I think, now he's had a transplant, but you know, we see so many family members that are advocates because sometimes the loved one is just not feeling well enough to do it either. So it's really great that you're doing it. You mentioned the feeling of shock when he was first diagnosed. What other feelings were you experiencing? And I guess the bigger question is, did you know anything about kidney disease before he was diagnosed?

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: I did not know anything about kidney disease. I was very leery of organ transplants prior to this. I didn't know anything. I didn't even understand the mouthful of the diagnosis, um, which to this day I still have a hard time pronouncing it um foclo... Help me Naomi.

Naomi Harris: I can't help you with it!

Mike Spigler: Um is it focal segmental glomerulosclerosis? I've said it one or one or two times if you haven't noticed.

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: Yes. And so I didn't even know what that was. I didn't even know there were different types of kidney disease, what kind of levels. I immediately went to death. That was like where my mind went, you know. I didn't know what to expect with it. And so there I was, just trying to navigate it. And so we didn't tell anybody for a very long time, including Naomi, which we have learned now that was a big mistake. But I think it all worked out in the end. But we were just hoping for the best. We were hoping we would never get to the point of having to make the ask. We were learning as we were living it as well. Yeah.

Tamara Ruggiero: Well, I think it's so challenging to be a parent in the position of trying to figure out what to tell your child. My own parents, my father was very sick on dialysis, and my own parents didn't tell me anything about it. I had no idea, I didn't even know what kidneys did and how ill he was. They chose to protect me by not sharing the information with me. And I think sometimes that's the route you go. And on the other hand, you don't want to overshare. How did you navigate that and figure out what to say to Naomi?

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: To be very honest, there was friction there. And I want to tell the viewer, the listener, that there will be moments of headbutting in the process of trying to figure out what to do. You know, there's different choices you have to make. You want to respect the patient's choice, but you also want to advocate. You gotta learn how to push and how to pull back, you know, on certain topics, certain issues. I wanted to tell Naomi. I believed that she could handle it. My husband did not want to tell her at all. And I think some of that was just the fear of of death and the fear of her seeing, you know, a major decline in him. And he wanted to preserve, I believe, her best memories of him and didn't want to bog her down with that, with that kind of information. And so we, as much as we read, we didn't really think about, oh, we should maybe try to get some books for her, or try to find other resources for her. We were moving at a like a at a really fast pace. Um, in terms of it started off as a slow leak, and then I always use that analogy, is like when people tell me they have kidney disease, is it a fast leak or a slow leak? Like, you know, that's one of the things you can kind of ask your doctor. And for us, it was like the slow leak, because he was sick over a 10-year period before he got the transplant. And so that kind of gave us a, it was kind of like fool's gold in that, oh, okay, he's living with it, and you know, and Naomi's young and she's like happy and jump roping and second lining. She didn't mention that, but she's a huge dancer and second liner. Shout out to New Orleans. But we just thought everything would be okay, and we could like just tough it out, and that was what we decided to do for a long time. And then once the slow leak became a fast leak, we had no choice really. He decided to do at-home dialysis, and so that's where Naomi kind of enters the journey, is now we got to reshift our whole house. And she talks about having the book, the boxes to the ceiling. It was just nurses coming, people, you know, deliveries for that. And we had to switch bedrooms, and that was the real alert for her, I believe. That now, why do I have to switch rooms, bedrooms? And that was because we needed better access to the bathroom for at-home dialysis. And so here now there's questions and different things happening, and she knows something is going on, but she still doesn't really can't really wrap her mind around what it is exactly.

Mike Spigler: For those listening not familiar with home dialysis, it's a great option. It usually allows people to continue to work in some cases or at least feel more comfortable, but it does come with a lot of supplies and space that's needed uh to do it for sure. Naomi, you were so little when you first heard this diagnosis. And I know when I was a kid, I thought my parents were like invincible. So, you know, what were you thinking and dealing with when that happened? And what were you thinking? What were your questions that you had?

Naomi DeBerry: I was kind of astonished. I didn't really understand anything. I didn't know what kidneys were, I didn't know what they did. And I think that was because I was so young. And it really wasn't until I got older that I started learning about kidneys that I started understanding the function of them and what nephrologists did and how it really can make somebody sick and it can keep somebody well. And when I was six, I don't think I could have been an advocate due to my age. I was so young, and it's hard. I think it's hard for adults to consume and understand such medical terminology. And I know it was definitely hard on me to try to understand it, especially being a kid. So I think as I've gotten older, it's allowed me to kind of explore the transplant world and to meet people and to hear their stories.

Mike Spigler: It's just really amazing the work that you've done since his diagnosis and adapted to it. I mean, did you have conversations with your friends and you try to explain them, to them what was going on?

Naomi DeBerry: I didn't. And that was, I think, partly knowing that nobody, for the longest time until my dad started dialysis, nobody knew. It was really only my mom and my dad and the doctors who did know. So it wasn't like I could really talk to anybody about it, partly because I didn't understand it myself. And being an only child, it pushed me into like isolation a lot because all the attention was on my dad, as it should be, because he's the patient, he's the person that's sick. But it kind of just left me to wonder who can I talk to? How can I do research?

Tamara Ruggiero: Did you find it was isolating also because your friends at school didn't know anything about kidneys? So it'd be hard to explain to them what was going on?

Naomi DeBerry: I think that's some of it. I think my parents, when we I started seeing the dialysis boxes in the house, I could sense that something was off. I couldn't quite put a pin on to exactly what the matter was. But it wasn't like I could really explain too much to other people. And right after my dad had his transplant, he was one of the last people to get any general type of surgeries before they shut everything down for COVID. So we were already in a double pandemic, essentially. We were trying to keep my dad safe, but we also had to stay safe ourselves. So it really did push me into a deeper isolation. So there was really nobody I could turn to and nobody I could talk to.

Tamara Ruggiero: Did you guys find any resources online to help you navigate the emotional aspects of this?

Naomi DeBerry: I think it was kind of a little later that we did find some of those things. My mom found a lot of like support groups for people with kidney disease and things of that nature. But as for me, I did not feel or I did not recognize or see that there were a lot of resources for me. And I remember one of the times that I did go to the hospital with my parents when my dad was getting like a checkup for all the checks leading up to the transplant, they gave me a coloring book. And I have an inquiring mind and I like to learn things and I like to find out why do things work the way they do. And a coloring book wasn't really doing that for me. Sure, it's a nice activity, but it didn't really help me. And I love to read. And so that's why I wrote my book. I wrote it so that people can have a resource so that people can learn and that they can find a way to kind of have a bit of something to cope with as their loved one is going through their process.

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: I would like to add that we were just in the trenches. And when you're going through it, you're not thinking about where can I find a resource, really. You're thinking about the bills still need to be paid. Naomi needs to get to school, she still needs some kind of life. Oh, let me try to put her in ballet. You're working full-time still. You're thinking all these things. I find that oftentimes someone will tell you, here's a resource. Like you're not, you don't know what to look for because you don't know what to look for. And so over time, we were able to know some more resources. I will say LOPA, shout out to them, was very helpful. Um, there's a woman named Miss Cheryl. Everybody in Louisiana kind of knows Miss Cheryl. She particularly helps those in the minority community. And so she was kind of a guide for us. But we were still very guarded and we thought we could just handle it alone. And so one of my real takeaways, and I tell people all the time, is don't be afraid to reach out. I think we suffered as a family for a long time in silence because we did not want to burden anybody. I'm not even sure my husband would have gotten a kidney had he had to ask himself. Once the larger family knew about it, the family kind of took charge and started talking as a family about, you know, transplantation. But my husband, he's a very modest, quiet guy. He wasn't gonna ask, you know, verbatim for help in that, in that manner. And so one of the things a mentor told me was checking on me after my husband had the transplant. He just called me very simply and said, you know, you can't be human by yourself. And that was a great lesson for me that you I can't do this alone. I was trying to do it alone. I was really had the cape on and was like, I got it. It's okay, we'll get through this, I can handle it. But I needed help. The family needed support to be able to navigate all of the things. So I hope that people can find ways to navigate shame if there is any, because I think that is a huge factor in surviving a journey like this is dealing with the shame. My husband wasn't a big drinker, he ran marathons. It wasn't like, you know, oftentimes when people are sick, others like to point to, well, you shouldn't have smoked this, you shouldn't have did that, you should, you know, like you brought this on yourself. And so I think there's a lot of that with kidney patients in particular, or liver patients sometimes.

Tamara Ruggiero: I mean, I think that's such a common experience and it's so challenging for people dealing with that misplaced feeling of shame, but it's so natural too, to I guess to feel that way. How did you, Kelly, how did you reach the point where you said to yourself, I've been trying so hard to manage this on my own, and now I'm at the point where I need to let people know and ask for help?

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: We had medical bills, we had a lot of financial things we were trying to balance as far as, and remember this is a 10-year journey, so you gotta think about all the prescriptions, all the doctor's visits, all of the things that people go through. And so there was that, there was just the stress of everything. And I think life just forced my hand to get help. And I really honestly, one day I was not even going out. I just kind of shut down from the world. I'm just gonna like, you know, put my head down and deal with this. And my friend had a ticket to something, like an arts event. And she was like, you should really go, you'll like it. And I went and people hadn't seen me in a long time. And these women just crowded me in a corner and were like, what's wrong? We're here for you. And they just they just basically made a committee of themselves to try to find support for me and help me and really just yanked it out of me that I needed help. So I'm grateful for those people. So, you know, everybody has a role in this journey. I eventually we had people that would bring us food, you know, to take some of the burden off cooking. We would have people that would just leave something on our porch, just a box, you know, everything wrapped and everything, ring the doorbell, dinners there at the door, you know. So there were people who still don't really know all what kidneys do and don't understand what a nephrologist is, but hey, I'll bring you some food. And then there were others that would take Naomi sometimes and, you know, help with her going to ballet or school pickup. Her teacher at the time, was that second grade, I think, would literally keep her after school for us sometimes, because I couldn't get there to her. And she would, she, her first grade, her second grade teacher literally became another resource for help. So it happened, eventually the resources came. But had we said something, maybe nine years earlier, you know, it might have been a little bit of an easier journey. But you live and you learn.

Tamara Ruggiero: What would you say to other people who are in that position, other caregivers who are, they're trying to handle everything on their own and they're just overwhelmed. What would you say to someone?

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: As they say, when you get on the airplane, put your own mask on first. I think in particular women, you know, just our caretaking, our nurturing spirit takes over. And so I was like the last person, I was like last on my list to do anything, take care of myself. And so I will say, take out some time to care for yourself. Find something small that brings you joy, whether it's reading, whether it's watching something on television, go for walks, try to clear your mind. And take it one day at a time. Like take the diagnosis one day at a time. It's a hard thing to swallow. Like if you try to put your hands around it all right away, you will do great damage, I think, to yourself, to your spirit. And so I think it's important to really take it one day at a time and have people walk that journey with you. But I will also say, I would have never thought I would be sitting here on a kidney podcast, you know, when I was going through that journey. We did not foresee any of this, not the book touring, not even Naomi writing a book. Like it's kind of surreal actually, to be on the other side of it somewhat and talking about it to strangers and traveling the world, literally, with my daughter, who at the time was six and didn't understand anything. And now just recently we were in South Carolina and she was the keynote, and we chuckle about this. She was the keynote at one of the medical schools talking to physicians in the entire kidney care department, and they were so impressed and so responsive that one of their staff persons said that they were going to add a question in their intake on were their children in the house and how are the children coping, and that was something they did not have in their intake form. Seeing that was in some ways it was worth it, you know, it was worth the journey because now because of just Naomi's work, and I give all the credit to her and putting her presentation together and telling doctors these are some of the things that you should consider and that you should consider, you know, and talking to children and maybe even inviting them on some of the appointments so that they're not afraid. You know, when you go to the doctors, there's something wrong, right? But what if you went to the doctor to learn? What if you went and talked with a doctor that helped you understand things a little bit better and took some of the fear out of what's happening in your body? So I will say to people, you never know how your diagnosis will help someone else. You just never, you just never know.

Mike Spigler: Naomi, I want to turn a little bit to your book and kind of your own advocacy. I mean, I think one of the things that's so impressive about you and the difference that you're clearly making is just when you see a young person going out of their way to really take something like this on, you know, you say to yourself as an adult, gosh, if she is doing this with everything else she's got going on and just trying to get through school and do ballet and everything else and still doing this, it really kind of inspires us to really want to do something. And we're so impressed by everything you've done. Can you talk a little bit about how you got to the idea of the book? What's the name of your book and where can people find it?

Naomi DeBerry: Yeah, I actually have a copy right here. My Daddy Needs a Gift. And I wrote it because I didn't want other kids to feel alone. And I don't know if I necessarily said the word alone because I'm an only child, but I didn't want other kids to feel like they didn't, they couldn't be a part of the process, that they couldn't have something that they could look up to as a resource. And I want to advocate because it's not something a lot of people don't like to talk about their medical history, and some could be for specific reasons, but I think if we bring awareness to it, we can help a lot of people. And like my mom was saying, my dad is a very humble guy. He's not gonna go out of his way to ask somebody for something, especially not something as big as a transplant or an organ. And I truly do think if my parents would have told other people that we knew, or told someone that we knew that we could have trusted, then this process could have been a lot different. And we could have maybe had even more help than we were very fortunate to receive. So I think the more we bring awareness to it, the more we just not even ask people to donate because that's a very big thing. Some people don't do it for religious reasons, some people are scared and they don't do it out of fear, which it is a scary thing. It's a big thing to get to take something out of you and to give it to somebody else. But the more people we can get informed, I think the more people we can get off of these lists that we have. And that can make people more healthy, and that's what I want.

Mike Spigler: Naomi, have you gotten feedback from other kids that have read your book and reached out to you and kind of given you some feedback on it and what it's meant to them?

Naomi DeBerry: I've actually gotten more feedback from adults. There have been some from kids. One of the people that we actually gave a book to, we signed it for them. Their father had just had a kidney transplant, and somebody else, their father is waiting on a transplant, a kidney transplant. So it kind of shows you that it impacts kids in a big way. And I think my parents were kind of scared to tell me. Like my mom said, they wanted me to still have a childhood. When they didn't tell me, I think it didn't necessarily feel like it had hurt or anything because I don't know if there was that much of a difference that I could have done had they told me or not. But I do believe that it shows that kids, we notice things when something is off. We can notice that things around us are happening and that we can trust kids to be resilient. We have to, because we everybody has to go through something hard in life. And whether it's earlier in life or it's later, somebody's gonna have to go through something. And I think it was a good teaching lesson for me that I have to you know, not necessarily know how to handle it or how to deal with it, but it taught me that it's okay to tell people things. It's okay to have some trust and to be able to look up to someone and say, I need help, or I need you to be able to like kind of know what I'm going through, what I'm dealing with.

Mike Spigler: You are wise beyond your years.

Tamara Ruggiero: I was just thinking, well, first of all, if this book had existed when I was a kid, it would have been priceless to me. And I think it's so fantastic that you have written this to help so many other children and teenagers who are going through this experience with a parent who's on dialysis and waiting for a kidney.

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: And all the places we go to the adults say what you just said. I wish I had this book when I was 12. There was another lady, I think it's on Naomi's Instagram, she tells the story of I guess in Michigan, if your parent was on dialysis, you could get your license, driving license early. And that's how she got her driver's license early, was because she had to take her father to dialysis appointments. And it was just mind-blowing for us to hear that story. And so she even we were in Ghana, we were in Africa, and we visited a village, and they have people that need kidney transplants there, and of course, all over the globe, the reaction of the people there to her in the book. You know, it's like rock star status kind of, and it's like, huh, you know, the global health issues bind us all. Like health binds us all. It transcends so many things, race, all of that. When you find someone that has that same story as you do, it just opens up a whole nother world of conversation and things like that.

Tamara Ruggiero: Naomi, you mentioned that children are resilient, maybe more resilient than we give them credit for. Would you say that going through this experience with your dad's health has made you even more resilient? Or how has it affected you in that way?

Naomi DeBerry: I think it's made me more aware that there's always somebody going through something that we don't necessarily know what it is. Sometimes people don't want to tell us what they're going through. And I think it's kind of given me more senses as to you can tell that something might be wrong with this person, or I don't know. But I think it's kind of just made me more aware of my surroundings when it comes to people. But I always have thought of myself as a compassionate person and a person that expresses empathy. And when I found out my dad was sick, I just tried to help in any way that I can. I love helping people. I think that's why God put me here. I think it's truly my purpose to help people. That's what I've kind of been learning as I'm getting older about being even more resilient, that whenever I can help someone, whether it's a medical issue or not, wherever somebody needs help, I will try to do so to the best of my ability.

Mike Spigler: We talked a lot about the experience that Jarvis was going through with dialysis. But when you found out that he was getting a transplant, I'd love to uh first ask how he's doing now post-transplant, but then of course, just how are you both feeling about that when you got the news that the transplant was happening?

Naomi DeBerry: My dad, he's doing great. He's six years post-his transplant, and everything off his medical records looked good. My mom probably has a better memory of when we found out that he was getting the transplant. And, you know, my mom. My mom is like a very skeptical person at some point, but she they had this raffle, and one of the prizes was a car. And so she was putting in her name, and she's like, Well, why not? I might win a car. Well, she didn't win the car, but she did end up winning a trip to Disney World.

Mike Spigler: Oh, wow.

Naomi DeBerry: And my mom and my dad were like, well, this isn't what we were necessarily hoping for or expecting. But my dad was really sick at that point. And we didn't know, my mom, especially and my dad, they didn't know if that could have been it. We didn't know necessarily. And my parents wanted to give me at least a really good, strong memory of me being with my dad. And we get a call at Disney World. My dad gets a call, and our cousin, our kidney donor, Aisha, says, I'm gonna give you a kidney. And my dad was very shocked, partly because he did not know that she had done any of it. Like my mom was saying, the extended family really came together. My dad had told only one person, which is our uncle Will. And he's really a person, he's a good listener, he's an organizer, and he really is like a big person on family. And my uncle gathered up our entire extended family and told him, hey, something is wrong with Jarvis, and we need to try to figure out how we can help him. And so when my dad got the call, if you could imagine that you, your donor didn't know, you didn't know anything about it, I would be very shocked too. And my mom, well, I can't speak for my mom, but I was excited that my dad was going to get a kidney. Still, I didn't really know all that was happening, but I was just excited for him, excited that he would have a chance at life, chance to better live. And it kind of became, Disney World kind of was the happiest place on earth. Not for the reasons that most people would think, but it did become, I think, the happiest place on earth for us.

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: It was kind of surreal. He was very sick at Disney World, trying to do dialysis and traveling. Naomi still really didn't know a lot. Our whole goal, he was, it was hot, and he was just struggling through the park. Unbeknownst to Naomi. She's like, I want that mini mouse hat, you know. And so she knew nothing really of just the struggle. And so we look back at those pictures and like, wow. But there's one picture we have where uh she's like in front of, is it Magic Kingdom or whatever? Castle, yeah. And she's just like, yes, you know, and it means so much to us. That picture means so much to us because it really captures the joy of I think family and the joy of finding out that there was a kidney donor.

Tamara Ruggiero: You must look at those photos from Disney World and think of the joy and also of how hard Jarvis fought to make a wonderful memory for Naomi and for you, Kelly. I mean, like you said, it was really physically difficult for him to be there, I'm sure.

Kelly Harris-DeBerry: So Disney has a special meaning for us, but not in the ways as Naomi said that most people, most people would. But it was joyful to get the transplant. And it was the day of the transplant that Naomi said to me, This is what I want to do. I want to be a transplant surgeon. I remember there was like a board at the hospital. We were waiting and waiting and waiting. It was a long surgery, and we were telling her, you'll see his name up when he's done. You know, they have the the kind of waiting chart. And I have a picture of her looking up at that chart, and another picture of her when she sees that the surgery is over and this kind of joy that she has, and meeting the transplant surgeon. We have some great pictures of her meeting the transplant surgeon, not knowing at that time that that's what she wanted to be. And so many people will say to her, how does she know she wants to be a transplant surgeon? You know, how could she know that that young? I can only suit that back, that question back to Naomi. But when you talk about LEGOs, the precision like you can talk about it more why you like LEGOs, why you pair it with your dreams in the future.

Naomi DeBerry: Yeah, I love that it makes me work with my hands. I think I'm a very like kinesthetic person, so I have to do something that's hands-on. And when I'm just in building LEGOs, I'm kind of like in another world. And it's just something that I can focus on, that I can have precision and accuracy in. And I know that I've finished it and it's built correctly. And when I think about being a transplant surgeon, a lot of people like my mom is saying, like, how do you know that's what you want to do? Like, are you sure? Like, it's a lot of things, but I just remember in that moment, I knew that's what I wanted to do. Like I said, I love helping people. I truly do, I truly mean that. And the doctors, I don't think they fully realized it. Like, they didn't just save my dad's life. They like, they help other people who their parents get to see, and they get to see their children, and they get to create more memories with their children and with their families for those specific reasons, just saving somebody's life. And I kind of think when you're giving somebody an organ, you're regifting the gift of life. Like you're helping this person live more. And I just want to help people's families the way those doctors were able to help us.

Tamara Ruggiero: I am 100% confident that you will. It seems to me that you can do anything you put your mind to, Naomi. And I'm so excited to see where you will go with your future and your career as a transplant surgeon. So, Kelly and Naomi, thank you for being with us today. We really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation. And Naomi, can you tell us your website? You have a great website. We'll put that on the show notes.

Naomi DeBerry: It's Naomi Creates Joy, and that's also my handle for Instagram.

Tamara Ruggiero: Thank you for sharing that with us. And again, thank you both for being here with us today.

To find out more about the topics we discussed in this episode, or to access resources to learn more about kidney disease, go to the episode show notes on your podcast listening platform or go to kidneyfund.org/podcast. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe or follow The Kidney Collective wherever you listen to podcasts, and leave us a like or review to help us reach more members of the kidney community.

Mike Spigler: You can also follow AKF on all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, BlueSky, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter/X, or whatever comes next. Join us next time. And remember that even in the toughest moments, there's hope ahead, and The Kidney Collective and AKF are here for you now.