Gave a kidney, got pal for life

Gave a kidney, got pal for life

Strangers brought together by transplant

BY JORDAN LITE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Posted Tuesday, June 19th 2007, 4:00 AM

Valerie Beckford (l.) and Jeanette Martinez embrace in hospital last June before operation in which Beckford got Martinez's kidney.

A year ago, Jeanette Martinez made a spur-of-the-moment decision to donate a kidney to a woman she hardly knew.

Today, she and Valerie Beckford are the best of friends.

"We see each other every single day, we hug and kiss each other every single day," Martinez said. "It's a beautiful thing."

Last year, Martinez, a concierge at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, heard through the grapevine that Beckford, an assistant to a surgeon at the hospital, was in renal failure and needed a kidney.

"I didn't think about it twice," Martinez, 47, recalled. "I told her I was the one who was going to give her a kidney."

Beckford, 43, has lupus. But since the transplant on June 16, 2006, she said, she has more energy, is gaining weight and is back at work. She's even healthy enough to have traveled recently to visit her parents in London.

"I still can't believe it," said Beckford, of Midwood, Brooklyn. "It's surreal."

Martinez, of the Bronx, said she went home from the hospital two days after the transplant and was back on the job six weeks later.

"I'm doing wonderfully health-wise," she said. "Mentally, it's just awesome."

Beckford was so grateful that this spring she sent Martinez on a cruise so she could live her dream of swimming with dolphins.

"I feel like I've been through a lot because of my illness but so did she with her surgery and time to recover," Beckford said. "Everyone deserves a break."

Martinez, who calls Beckford "my other half," said "the gift of life and being closer together - that's more than enough.

"This was a gift from her to make my dream come true," Martinez said. "In no way was it a payment from her. It was a gift of love."

jlite@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2007/06/19/2007-06-19_gave_a_kidney_got_pal_for_life-1.html?ref=rss