![]() ![]() ![]() She says seeing how difficult life can be for people with chronic kidney disease was part of what led her to further specialize in nephrology. Vanessa Grubbs was a primary care doctor when she met Robert Phillips. After being on the waiting list for a kidney for five years, he had neared the top of the list.Ĭourtesy of Vanessa Grubbs Dr. Grubbs writes of accompanying Phillips in 2004 to meet with members of the transplantation team - including a doctor, a nurse and a financial counselor - for a routine evaluation and update. White people account for about a third of the candidates awaiting kidney transplants, but they receive every other donated kidney. ![]() Roughly 1 in 3 of the candidates awaiting kidney transplants are African American, Grubbs learned, but they receive only about 1 in 5 of all donated kidneys. Her candid new memoir, Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers: A Kidney Doctor's Search for the Perfect Match,explores her personal story and some troubling statistics. And along the way she found a new calling as a nephrologist - a kidney doctor. Robert Phillips, who eventually became her husband, had waited years for a transplant Grubbs ended up donating one of her own kidneys to him. Their relationship brought Grubbs face to face with the dilemmas of kidney transplantation - and the racial biases she found to be embedded in the way donated kidneys are allocated. Vanessa Grubbs fell in love with a man who had been living with kidney disease since he was a teenager. While she was a primary care doctor in Oakland, Calif., Dr. ![]()
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