21-Year-Old College Student From Mississippi Is Searching for a Kidney

Tiranda Plummer just wants to march with her Jackson State University band. The biology / pre-med major is a saxophone-section leader in the legendary Sonic Boom of the South marching band. Sadly, she’s getting dialysis and patiently waiting for a kidney transplant instead.

She was diagnosed with kidney disease at just 9 years old, but at the age of 11, she received a transplant from her stepmother. Things were working fine until earlier this year. “I tested positive for COVID-19, and I immediately knew that I needed to come back home due to my pre-existing health conditions,” Tiranda explains.

She was in the hospital for weeks with one hope. “At that point, I was like, 'Okay, please let me see my 21st birthday.'" She was released from the hospital a day before her 21st birthday, but then things got worse. COVID-19 attacked her body and her donated kidney. This took her out of the day-to-day campus routine of a healthy student.

Doctors told her she needed to be placed on dialysis and she needed a new kidney. Now, Tiranda is on the search for an O-positive kidney donor.

According to the director of bands, Dr. Roderick Little, no one is more deserving. “Tiranda's personality is just second to none. I mean, she is definitely a ray of sunshine like none other, “ he said, “And so when you see a student like that, you don't want any hurt or harm or anything negative to come towards that individual because they're so positive. “

Not only is Tiranda a Sonic Boom of the South band member, but she is also a straight-A student. And she plans to be a pediatric nephrologist, the same kind of doctor that treated her kidneys when she was a child. “I'm entering my last year of undergrad,” she explains.  “I want to attend medical school. I'm this close to the end.”

And just like Sonic Boom’s signature entrance song, “Get Ready,” Tiranda is getting ready because she is sure her kidney match is out there. “I hope that by the end of this year, I can say that I successfully had a kidney transplant and I am able to finish my degree at Jackson State University,” she said.

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