Frederick Bender:  

The article from the Magazine "All You" printed in July of 2004 Frederick Bender couldn't believe what he was seeing. On his computer screen was an e-mail from Stephanie Zeiba, an old friend from high school in Greenbelt, Md. "I thought she was dead", explains Frederick, 42, who has known Stephanie since the fifth grade. The two had lost contact with each other after high school graduation, then, during college, he had heard a rumor that Stephanie had died from kidney problems. Stephanie, very much alive, had written Frederick about a class reunion he was organizing. "I had no idea about the rumor", says Stephanie, now 43. "But it was great to get in touch with Frederick " he was my first kiss." So much had happened since they had last seen each other. Stephanie had been in good health her first year of college when she began to suffer from fatigue, blurry vision and horribly painful menstrual periods. She thought it was stress, but her symptoms got worse, so she went to the infirmary and was told she had a bad case of the flu. Dissatisfied with the diagnosis, she went to the hospital and found out her blood pressure was a whopping 280/240. Tests revealed that her kidneys had shriveled to the size of acorns and were not functioning. Because of her critical condition, she was moved up the transplant list and received a cadaver kidney in June 1981. After Stephanie recovered she finished college, married and had a daughter, Megan, in 1993. But soon after Megan's birth, both her marriage and her donor kidney started to fail. When she sent Frederick...Expand for more