Francia Raísa Says She 'Couldn't Move' for 2 Months After Donating a Kidney to Selena Gomez

What you need to know about recovering from kidney donation.
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Francia Raísa made headlines in September when it was revealed that she donated a kidney to her friend, Selena Gomez. Gomez revealed in an Instagram post that she needed a kidney transplant due to her lupus, and Raísa volunteered to donate her own. “There aren’t words to describe how I can possibly thank my beautiful friend Francia Raísa,” Gomez wrote on Instagram. “She gave me the ultimate gift and sacrifice by donating her kidney to me.”

On Monday, Raísa opened up on Harry about her experience and recovery. “It’s harder as the donor because we are losing something our body didn’t need to lose,” she said, per Us Weekly. “So trying to recover from that, and [Gomez was] gaining something her body needed. So she’s up and at it immediately and I had a hard time.” Raísa also said she "couldn’t get up without having someone help me,” an experience that she called “very humbling.”

“I couldn’t take a shower by myself, I had to have someone help me because I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’m a very, very active person, so the fact that my doctor said I couldn’t move for two months. Two months, I couldn’t do anything active. All I could do was walk. That was very hard for me and I have a dog and every day the thing I look forward to is drinking my coffee and walking and I couldn’t do that. It was really, really hard.”

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Donating a kidney certainly isn't easy. But your recovery process depends on a few different factors, and for most people it's not quite this extreme.

First, let’s cover some kidney basics.

Your kidneys are two bean-shaped organs that are located on either side of your spine just below the rib cage. Each one is about the size of a fist, the Mayo Clinic says, and their main function is to filter and remove excess waste, minerals, and fluid from your blood. While most people are born with two kidneys, most people actually only need one well-functioning kidney to be healthy, Amer Rajab, M.D., Ph.D., surgical director for kidney transplant and living donors at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF.

People have to go through a rigorous screening process before they can donate a kidney, and doctors want to make sure their body will be OK with having just one kidney, John Friedewald, M.D., medical director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, tells SELF. “The whole purpose is to make sure they can live a healthy life with a single kidney,” he says. People with diabetes, high BMIs, or organ diseases may not be able to donate.

Kidney donation definitely isn’t easy, but donors generally do pretty well after the surgery, Dr. Friedewald says.

In most transplantation centers, a kidney donation is done through minimally invasive (laparoscopic) surgery, meaning a surgeon will make a small incision in your abdomen and remove your kidney that way. “The incision made to take out a kidney is very small, and that allows for a quicker post-op recovery,” Dr. Friedewald says. “Donors are usually out of the hospital in one to two days—the next day in our program.”

That doesn’t mean you have your kidney removed and you wake up feeling amazing. “It’s still an operation,” Dr. Rajab says. “These donors are coming into the hospital as completely healthy, normal people. They’re going to wake up with an incision, pain, and having had anesthesia.” In the first few days post-op, the donor often seems to go in “opposite directions” from the recipient, who was sick to begin with, Dr. Friedewald says. “You’re coming from a place of good health to having something done to you vs. the recipient, whose new kidney often starts doing really well and clearing toxins quickly,” he says.

However, within a few days, donors often start to feel better—they’re just not 100 percent yet. Once your one kidney is gone, the other essentially recognizes that its partner is missing and it has to pick up some of the slack, Alvin Wee, M.D., chief of the kidney transplant center at the Cleveland Clinic, tells SELF. "It has to work doubly hard," he says.

The recovery time and pace ultimately depends on your age and overall health.

Older people may take longer to heal from a kidney donation, but most people are back to completely normal within six weeks, Dr. Rajab says—and they may be back at work in as early as two weeks post-op.

Most centers will want you up and walking around while you’re still in the hospital after your surgery. And, once you go home, they ask that you take it easy for a few weeks, but still do some light activity, like walking regularly as Raísa describes. “The only thing we don’t want them to do is heavy activity,” Dr. Rajab says. “No push-ups, sit-ups, or weight lifting for anywhere from four to six weeks.” (You have internal sutures that need to heal, Dr. Friedewald explains.) After that, you can get back into your normal routine, but it’s best to start slowly, he says.

A week post-op, you'll probably be able to do 60 to 70 percent of your normal routine and by four weeks post-op, you should be at 80 to 90 percent, Dr. Wee says. By six weeks, you should feel like yourself again.

There is a risk for some rare complications, such as a UTI or other infection. But, without those, you’ll usually see the doctor four to six weeks post-op, again at six months, a year, and two years later, Dr. Rajab says. And after the six week period, you’re generally OK to do whatever you want. “We tell people that after they’re healed, there are no limitations on activity,” Dr. Friedewald says.

After you've donated and healed, you may be at an increased risk for high blood pressure, kidney failure, and developing preeclampsia if you become pregnant. So, if you're considering donation, it's important to talk about the possible long-term effects with your doctor.

Kidney donation is a serious decision, and transplant centers generally advise people to wait before making anything final. But Dr. Rajab says he’s in awe of people who decide to help save a life this way. “Those people, I have great admiration for,” he says. “They are a really different type of people.”

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