“Hi guys. My name is Joshy, and I’m here to talk about my dad. My dad is a very hardworking man who has dedicated his whole entire life to his family and his children. But now his kidneys have failed…”

It’s a simple video, spotted on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, but it’s a snapshot of what’s at stake for Joshy Reddy and the rest of her large, very loving family.

Her father, Dan, has been going to Royal Columbian Hospital over the past few months for dialysis—this after finding out very suddenly that his kidneys had failed. Joshy tears up as she talks about how a dark cloud loomed over their Christmas, as they worked quickly to get Dan in for dialysis.

“We have no idea how this happened,” Reddy tells New West Anchor, adding that in the year leading up to his kidneys failing, he’d been experiencing some swelling, particularly in his legs. That led to multiple blood tests, which is how Reddy says the family found out about her father’s condition.

Reddy says the Kidney Care Centre talked to her and her family about her dad’s options, which included trying to find a live donor. She was also asked about the option of putting her dad on home dialysis, which she was worried about doing.

“Home dialysis, you have to have a place where it’s sanitized … it’s very difficult; every single surrounding has to be sanitized. And if it’s not, you can get infected really quickly.”

They’ve opted for hospital dialysis three times a week and she anticipates his move to late night dialysis in the coming weeks. But even just to get him to the stage of receiving dialysis at a hospital has been challenging, according to Reddy, because it required a lot of advocating.

Advocating for her father is something that not only she had to get used to—though she stresses she’ll do anything for him—it’s also something Dan had struggles with accepting, as Reddy says he does not enjoy sitting around.

“My dad is a very hardworking man. He came from Fiji in 1974. He came [to Canada] with a three-month-old baby, which was me. Had no money in his pocket whatsoever, worked little jobs that kept us going. Mom and dad went through the garbage, got a mailbox they found, sold that just to give me milk. They never let me go hungry.”

There are days Reddy when says she struggles to watch her dad do even the smallest things.

“I have a brother and sister who came into the world when we [finally] had the home; we had all of that six years later. I didn’t have all that, and I feel that I owe my parents a lot. Being a strong advocate for my father right now … I still feel that the medical system isn’t helping. It’s not helping.”

Dan is 69 and had been working for as long as he could prior to the diagnosis. He’s spent years driving a truck for Lilydale.

“My dad wants to go back to work. He misses it. Even his boss misses him…he’s the most liked truck driver there is. His bosses will say that. ‘Ms. Reddy, we miss him. We want to have him back.’ He wants to go back.

“My other daughter is becoming a nurse. She’s 21. My dad has diabetes, and he has the Dexcom on his arm, my daughter puts it on him, and he calls her his personal nurse,” Reddy says with a bit of a chuckle. “It’s hard on the family, but we’re strong. We’re a unit.”

Why a living kidney donor?

According to BC Transplant, a living kidney donor tends to have a better chance of being a success as compared to a deceased donor.

“Adults may choose to donate a kidney to someone they know, on behalf of someone they know, or can donate anonymously,” reads a post on BC Transplant’s website.

All kidney donations in BC are managed through Vancouver General Hospital’s (VGH) and St. Paul’s Hospital’s pre-assessment transplant clinics. Reddy says her father was previously with VGH but has since had his file transferred to St. Paul’s.

After she posted her video, Reddy thought they’d lucked out finding a potential donor in Las Vegas, but that option was apparently denied by VGH.

The Anchor reached out to BC Transplant via the Public Health Services Authority (PHSA) on this and was told that it couldn’t provide any information about this specific case. It did provide a statement regarding a policy for out-of-country living donors.

“There must be a relationship (a relative or close friend) between the potential donor and the recipient,” the statement from BC Transplant via PHSA reads. It goes on to say that this is done “to protect the donor and recipient from any potential harms and risks when the donor and recipient do not have a prior relationship.”

“Risks could include things like the pressure for financial or material gain by either party. If a donor and recipient know one another, it is easier to establish and understand the motivation to be a living donor…when a recipient and donor know one another, the parameters of the relationship are established, and it is less likely that the donor or recipient will have different expectations about emotional consequences.”

Every member of the family has wanted to give their kidney to Dan, but Reddy says she, her mom, and her siblings each have medical conditions, including high blood pressure and diabetes—which means they’re ineligible.

“He’s A positive [blood type], so the suitable matches would be A positive, A negative, O positive, O negative,” explains Reddy.

“Please come forward and help my dad. Give him the gift of life so he can live to see his four grandchildren, grow up, get married. Watch them become a nurse, a police officer, do all of that. I would be the most grateful daughter out there…and you would be the most amazing human. You would be a part of our family.”

“I know there’s an angel out there. And I know that angel will come.”

To learn more about how you can donate, or how you could help another person searching for a kidney donor, visit Reddy’s Instagram page.