Woman Searching for Kidney Donor

Video diaries show her struggle

HARLINGEN - Carolyn Horsley knows she's a woman living on borrowed time.

"I wonder if I'm gonna be here tomorrow," she says.

"I haven't been able to get out of bed the last two or three days," she tells us. "I'm very weak. Not eating very well. Although I'm trying."

Carolyn's kidneys have failed. Her body can no longer get rid of waste on its own.

She spends two day a week at the Valley Baptist Dialysis Center in Harlingen. She's hooked up to a machine that cleans her blood, so the toxins don't kill her. It's not easy on a body.

"Life on dialysis is difficult," says Laura Yates, the center's director.

Doctors say on average most people live just five or six years once they start dialysis. For Carolyn, it's been five and half years and counting.

"I hate it," she says with a sigh. "I need help. I'm getting weaker and weaker."

Carolyn says, "I want a donor so I can live."

But finding a kidney donor is difficult.

In Texas and Oklahoma, more than 8,000 people are on the waiting list for an organ. But last year, there were less than 600 donors.

Carolyn's struggle was made worse recently. A matching kidney became available, but she was too sick for the operation.

NEWSCHANNEL 5 will be following Carolyn as she searches for a donor. We've given her a camera to show us her life. We'll be adding segments of her video diaries on the web site.

We'll follow her struggle and get an insight to her thoughts.

"I've got to admit, sometimes I've thought about ending it all," Carolyn says. "Just over dosing, quitting dialysis altogether, or shooting myself."