![]() ![]() Grubbs, 47, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, and the author of the new book Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers: A Kidney Doctor’s Search for the Perfect Match, recently discussed her journey and her goal of educating the public about kidney disease. ![]() She also became an advocate for African-American patients, who have to wait nearly two years longer than whites to get life-saving transplants. And she didn’t stop there.ĭistressed by the racial disparities in health care she encountered during her husband’s medical odyssey, she shifted course professionally, pursuing advanced training in the demanding field of nephrology, or kidney treatment. Grubbs married her boyfriend, Robert Phillips, now the CEO of a Sacramento nonprofit, four months after the surgery. So we kind of knew what we wanted in a partner we knew where we were going.” We had (chuckles) - how do you say it? We’d been to the circus, seen all the rides. “We weren’t officially engaged, but it’s not like we were teenagers. ![]() ![]() “A lot of people thought I was insane,” she recalled. Grubbs, who is not a woman given to halfway gestures, not only gave a kidney to the man she loved on that day in April 2005 - she did so after dating him for only nine months. Dr Vanessa Grubbs lay in a hospital bed, her stomach doing somersaults, even as a smile played at the corners of her mouth.Ī nurse gave her Valium through the IV in her left arm, and then Grubbs was wheeled off to the operating room, where a surgeon would extract one shiny pink kidney from deep within her abdomen. ![]()
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