Ep.197 The Gift of a Kidney: One Woman’s Journey Through Grief, Service, and Second Chances

On this week’s episode of Asking for a Friend, Michele sits down with Cristina Fontana, registered nurse, health coach, living kidney donor, and author of Metamorphosis: The Gift of a Life Lived Twice.

Cristina’s journey began with profound loss. When she was just nine years old, her father was diagnosed with kidney cancer—a moment that quietly planted the seed for a future she never imagined. Years later, after building a career in healthcare and raising a family, Cristina made the extraordinary decision to donate one of her kidneys to a complete stranger.

In this powerful conversation, Cristina shares the deeply personal story behind that decision, what the donation process actually looks like, and how meeting the young man who received her kidney became one of the most meaningful moments of her life.

But this episode goes far beyond organ donation.

Cristina also opens up about navigating grief after losing her father at a young age, how loss shaped her perspective on time and purpose, and why she believes we all have the ability to transform hardship into something meaningful.

Today, she continues that mission through her work as a health coach, author, and advocate for living kidney donation—while also climbing mountains around the world with other kidney donors to raise awareness and inspire others.

This conversation is about resilience, service, and the powerful reminder that even the most difficult chapters of our lives can lead to extraordinary impact.

Where to find Cristina Fontana and her book Metamorphosis:

https://cristinafontanawellness.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/criselba.wellness/

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4sfociU

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions regarding a medical condition.

Transcript

Lifestyle First And Peptides Reality

Michele Folan 0:00

The information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding your individual health needs. You already know I don't believe in shortcuts. If you're not lifting, walking, eating enough protein, managing stress, and prioritizing sleep, peptides are not the answer. Lifestyle is the foundation. Always. But here's the truth midlife biology can be stubborn. Hormones shift, recovery slows, body composition changes, and energy dips even when you're doing the work. That's where medically supported peptide therapy can be layered in, not as a replacement for discipline, but as strategic support. Physician prescribed, clinically guided, compounded through an FDA-regulated pharmacy. This is about optimization, not escape. If you've built the foundation and feel like you've hit a wall, this might be the next intelligence step. Lifestyle first, strength mandatory, support biology when it needs backup. If this resonates, send me a message and let's have a real discussion. Or check out the link in the show notes.

Christina Fontana And Rebuilding Life

Michele Folan 1:21

Health, wellness, fitness, and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. Today's conversation is about transformation. My guest is Cristina Fontana, a registered nurse, health coach, living kidney donor, and now a best-selling author. Her life has been deeply rooted in healthcare, service, and prevention, but her personal journey took her somewhere she never expected. After experiencing profound loss, Christina found herself asking the same question so many women quietly wrestle with. How do you move forward without leaving someone you love behind? That question became the foundation of her book, Metamorphosis, and for a new chapter in her life centered around resilience, mindset, and purposeful living. Today we're talking about grief, strength, service, identity, and what it really looks like to rebuild. Cristina Fontana, welcome to Asking for a Friend. Thank you so much for having me, Michele. It's nice to meet you. Cristina and I are both faster way coaches, and I think that's kind of how we probably got introduced. I think you're right, yes. Yeah. And as small that as that community is, it's got big arms. So it it does, it does reach out to many. I want to start at the beginning because I think you've got a very interesting story. Tell us a little bit, Cristina, about where you grew up and what home life was like coming up.

Caracas Childhood And Cultural Identity

Cristina Fontana 3:09

So I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. Okay. Um my parents uh both moved there after World War War II. My dad was Italian. Uh, my mom was American, okay. And my mom was connected with the mining business and Angel Falls. My dad was a civil engineer and he wanted to have a way to make some money and send it back home to his family in Italy. So they met there, they got married. My sister and I were born there. We really had no family, no family there. You know, our family was in Italy, in the US. Um, but we were we're very, very close family. I have one older sister, Margarita. We had a cocker spaniel named Judy, and it was just my mom and my dad. So very small. So when did when did you all leave Venezuela? So we moved to Indiana in, let me think. It's been, it'll be 30 years this year. Okay. So it's been it's it's been a while. You know, when people ask me what is home, it's difficult to say what is home because I feel like I'm a little bit of each culture, I'm a little bit of Venezuela, even though I don't have Venezuelan roots, but I was born there. I have some Italian roots because of my dad and some American roots because of my mom. But living in the US for the last 30 years, I feel like the U.S. is home now.

Michele Folan 4:36

You know, it's so interesting because your formative years were in Venezuela. And I have to ask you, how do you feel about the possible changes there in that country?

Cristina Fontana 4:48

You know, um, I have not been back to Venezuela in 20 years. So when we heard what was happening, you know, in a way, obviously all of us are happy. We're happy that that the current president has left, but it's a whole regime, right? If the entire regime is not taken out, just removing one person in the big scheme of things is not going to make a big difference. I have friends, we still have family that live there, that said that after what happened in Venezuela, things have actually gotten worse. So it's more difficult to go out on the street. If they catch you, you know, being supportive of our current American president, they will take your phone, they can take you away, and you might never see your family again. So I think it's gonna take many, many, many years for Venezuela to rebuild, for American companies to come and, you know, spend money in Venezuela, but but it's a little light of hope. Yeah. It's a little light of hope that I haven't had in 20 years. Because we thought we would never go back. Yeah. I went 20 years ago and my Venezuelan passport had expired, and I went in and out of the country with my American passport, and they didn't want to let us leave. So we were almost held hostage in Venezuela and we couldn't leave. So they let us leave, but they said, Senora, the next time you come, you make sure you come with your Venezuelan passport. The problem is there's no way to get your Venezuelan passport. There's no Venezuelan consulates or embassies in the US. The consulate, as you know, of the US and Venezuela had shut down. It just recently reopened. So so unless, so if we wanted a passport, we had to stay there. And if you stay there, that could take years. Yeah. You might never leave. So, but we have a little glimpse of light that maybe we can go back. Yeah.

Michele Folan 6:34

I, you know, and I I appreciate this is a very interesting perspective because certainly we don't get to talk to anyone that is currently there and how the environment has changed for the better or for the worse. But I do agree with you that it is going to take some time just from what I read. And uh that, you know, there is there's light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully, for for all the the great people of Venezuela.

Cristina Fontana 7:01

Yeah.

Michele Folan 7:02

And then you speak three languages.

Cristina Fontana 7:04

I do. I don't remember learning any of them. Because, like I said, growing up in Venezuela and going to school, I went to an all-girl Catholic school. The language was Spanish. So I spoke Spanish at home. And both of my parents were very, you know, when we got home, my dad spoke only Italian. And if we answered back in Spanish, he would completely ignore us. My mom spoke only English, and the same thing applied. Like there was no conversation unless I spoke English to my mom, Italian to my dad. And I remember them saying, You know, you'll be thankful one day. You'll be perfectly trilingual and you'll be thankful someday. And growing up, I didn't quite love it because you know, my friends would come to my house. My mom wouldn't speak Spanish to them. She would really try to speak English and have them speak English back. We learned English at school. And the same with my dad. So I grew up with like all three languages, cultures, everything intermixed. That's you might hear a little accent, but that's why.

Michele Folan 8:04

Yeah, just you a little, you you have a little bit of an accent, but you know, we all have accents from somewhere, right? I mean, we it it's it's the Midwest accent. I I talk to people, you live in Indiana, I know, like you get a little bit of an Indiana accent. I mean, it doesn't matter. I live very close to Kentucky. And you know, you go across the river and accents change. So it's just fun. I I think it's a it's a cool study. And I'm just curious how growing up in this multicultural home, how that shaped your identity growing up.

Cristina Fontana 8:39

You know, it made me realize that that we are a mix of cultures, right? We're not just Venezuelans, right? Like my friends would love coming home, like and never know what was happening in my home. Like one time they might come home and my mom had pumpkins and it was, you know, Halloween and let's carve pumpkins. And they'd be like, who carves pumpkins? Well, let's all go to Christina's house to carve pumpkins. Or, you know, the customs from Venezuela, you know, eating the typical ayacas during Christmas. So, you know, it made me realize too that all of us have a mix of cultures within us. And it has made me so hungry to visit the world, every corner of the world. And every time I'm in a new place, even if I don't speak the language, I want to learn about it. I wanna, I wanna live it. I want to try the typical foods, you know. I want to, like my family used to say, you know, in Rome, you do as the Romans do, right? So it was fun. And it was fun because to me that was normal, right? But when my friends came home, let's say we sing happy birthday, and still to this day, I do that with my kids and my granddaughter. We always speak sing happy birthday in three different languages. That's great. Because we did it then, and it's like I did it with my kids, and now my kid, my daughter does it with her daughter. So, you know, it it I think it just broadens your perspective on the world, on who we are. Yeah, it's you.

Michele Folan 10:01

Well, I'm envious that you you are multilingual. So anyway, take that for what it is, but I am envious. And then you you were drawn to healthcare. What drew

From Dad’s Cancer To Nursing

Michele Folan 10:12

you to health care then, particularly oncology and pediatrics?

Cristina Fontana 10:17

Well, when I was nine years old, my dad was diagnosed with kidney cancer, renal cell carcinoma. As a nine-year-old, you don't really know what that means, except, you know, we lived in Venezuela. My aunt lived in Texas in Houston, and we found out dad needed to have surgery. So he needed to have surgery to remove the cancer, to remove the kidney. And we spent an entire summer, like three months in Houston. So I knew from that time that I wanted to do something in medicine, that I wanted to help people. Um, I remember talking to my mom about it, and she was like, you know, you can't help your dad, you're too young. At the time, the topic of kidney transplant had come up, and he was too sick, he was not a candidate. And so it that kind of planted a little seed, if you will, and maybe in my heart, that I wanted to do something in the medical field. You know, my I've always loved kids, and my mom was trying to push me to be a teacher. You know, you should probably go work and do something with kids. But that didn't, that didn't excite me. Like I wanted to do something that excited me. So that's when I went into medical school.

Michele Folan 11:25

Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then tell me a little bit about that. You went to medical school, and then when did transplant medicine then start to come into the picture here?

Cristina Fontana 11:38

Well, it's a it's uh it's a long process. So I went to medical school. Uh, I never graduated. I had two years left to graduate, and that's when Venezuela had the big coup that Hugo Chavez took over the military. Um, so it became very unstable at that point. I had been held at gunpoint with my mom multiple times. That is not in the book, but I had been held at gunpoint multiple times. We knew if we stayed there, it was not going to be the kind of life that I dreamt one day, getting married and having children, the life I wanted to give to my children. So my husband and I got married, and I had my sister had come to visit December, and we had talked about the political situation in Venezuela. She was living in Indiana, doing a PhD, and she had said, you know, why don't you give me all of your transcripts and we can see if we can get you into medical school at Indiana University? And at the time, my first daughter had already been born. I had taken a semester off, and going back, I realized I was missing precious milestones of her development. So I knew moving to a different country was going to be difficult. Going back into medicine was going to be difficult. So I still wanted to do something in the oncology field, but not quite medicine. So I applied to the radiation therapy program here in Indiana University, got accepted immediately. So I started that summer. My sister brought the paperwork back in December. I got the admission letter in the spring. Sell everything you have, pack your kids, your suitcases, and come with nothing. We had $4,000. That's all we had. Oh wow. Yeah, and just moved to a new country. And I started with radiation therapy, worked in radiation therapy for multiple, multiple years. And then, long story short, I was working for a company called Cyber Knife of Indianapolis. And when Cyber Knife shut down, I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom. You know, when you grow up losing your dad young, there's always a fear. What if something happens to my husband? Can I just be a stay-at-home mom? I would never be able to maintain my kids if I'm a stay-at-home mom. And I remember I was in the car and I listened to a radio ad of Marion University saying, Oh, we have an accelerated BSN program, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, 16 months, but you must have a previous bachelor degree. I remember getting home and telling my husband, I'm going to go to school to be a nurse. And he was like, Wait, what? And I did. I applied to the program. Initially, they had told me that I was going to have to retake all the basic science classes because it had been over 10 years. And I was like, Oh, I don't think I can do that. So someone had told me at the admissions program to send a letter to the dean of the School of Nursing and explain my situation, which I did. And they said, Well, we've never done this before, but I'm going to let you test out of all the science classes. If you test out anatomy, chemistry, you know, physics with an A or above, you're automatically entered into the nursing program. Wow. And I'll be darn if I didn't take the challenge and I tested out of all the basic sciences. Way to go, Christina. A or above. And then I was directly admitted into the nursing program.

Michele Folan 14:53

That is amazing. All right. So let's talk about then. You've had this great nursing career. I want to get to transplant medicine because this is really, I think, where your story really starts to shine.

Donating A Kidney To A Stranger

Cristina Fontana 15:09

Yeah. So I started my nursing career of all places in radiation. Of course, because I had been a radiation therapist, right? Did radiation. It was really far. If you're familiar with Indiana, I worked in Fort Wayne, which is two hours from Zionsville. So I would drive two hours to work one way, two hours to work the other way. Needless to say, that didn't last very long. It was it, especially in the winter, it was awful. Um, switched that and went into pediatrics. Okay. And once I was in pediatrics, I met um one of my little patients who was a diabetic. So diabetes and hypertension are the two leading causes of kidney failure. Okay. This little fifth grader was very mischievous. He would not take care of his blood sugars. I mean, which fifth grader does, right? Let's all right. He was being raised at the time by his uncle. And I think he would sneak things in the bus and in recess, and he would come to the clinic, the teachers would bring him to the clinic with super high blood sugars. You know, I'd have to get on the phone, call his team. Well, it was scary. I was working as a school nurse, very scary. Yeah, at the time. But that brought into my mind a little seed that had been planted years ago when my dad was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Because I knew if Logan continued living the way he was living, he would end up eventually, possibly with kidney failure. And so I was like, you know, I think I want to look into donating my kidney to a stranger. He didn't need a kidney then, so he was still doing okay. But I did a lot of research. I looked into, you know, can you donate to someone who's not a family member? Can I help someone in need? And so little, lo and behold, I went through the process, went through the program, got admitted. And as I was going to my six-month follow-up, the kidney transplant team reached out to me and said, you know, we have an opening for a kidney donor coordinator. Oh. Would you want to work in transplant? And I was like, Well, I have no experience in transplant except what I've been through as a patient myself, as a living donor. I don't know. That's going to be really hard shoes to fill. And I will never forget them telling me at the interview, we can teach you anything there is to teach about transplant medicine. What we can't teach you is the heart that you have. So you've been through the process as a donor yourself. You'll be able to help so many other more donors because you've been through it. We'll teach you the rest. And that was it. That was the beginning of that chapter.

Michele Folan 17:41

All right. I had so I we gotta back up a little bit because first of all, was your family supportive of you being a living kidney donor?

Cristina Fontana 17:51

Well, when you tell your family that you're gonna have a surgery that you don't need to remove an organ that you don't need to have removed to give it to someone you don't know, obviously their response was like, Are you crazy? What are you doing? Why are we doing this? So they were not supportive at the beginning. But my husband knew me well enough to know that when I set my mind up to do something, I do it.

Michele Folan 18:19

Why does that not surprise me?

Cristina Fontana 18:22

It was the reason I really wanted to do this. And, you know, I explained to him what had happened with my dad and where my heart was. And um, I had talked to one of my living donor coordinators at the time, and she said, I would recommend bringing your husband to meet the surgeon the day you come in to meet your transplant surgeon, which is the one that wrote the foreword of my book. And I brought Daniel in and you know, he grilled the surgeon. My husband is an oral surgeon, a dentist, and he was like, you know, you're gonna take her right kidney. What if you damage your liver? What if she bleeds to death? And I remember Dr. Powellson looking at my husband in the eye and saying, number one, I've never lost a patient. Number two, I have a huge responsibility. I have people that are perfectly healthy coming to an OR for me to do surgery and remove a kidney. I make sure they leave that OR as healthy as they came in. Yeah. That's all my husband needed to know. So from that point on, he was fully supportive. He was like, okay, you're in great hands. Dr. Powellson is wonderful. You know, he talked to my sister, and you know, eventually everybody was on board, but not initially. Yeah. I had to give my husband time. I had to wait, let him digest it. He did some research. But I think that the transformative moment for him was meeting the surgeon in person. Yeah.

Michele Folan 19:47

All right. Christina, we're gonna take a quick break and we come back. I want to talk about your recovery physically and emotionally. Before we jump back into today's conversation, I want to ask you something. If you've been listening for a while, you know this podcast isn't fluff. We talk about muscle, metabolism, hormones, brain health, longevity, the stuff that actually determines how we live in our 70s, 80s, and beyond. And the show keeps growing because you share it. So if an episode has helped you rethink your health, send it to a friend, text it to your sister, share it with your walking buddy. That's how this community expands. Smart, curious women bringing other smart, curious women with them. Also, I'd love to hear from you. What topics do you want me to explore? Who do you want me to challenge? What questions are you afraid to ask but secretly want answered? You can use the link in the show notes to join the community or send me an email with your ideas directly. This podcast exists because you're asking better questions. All right, let's get back to the episode.

Recovery And Meeting Recipient

Michele Folan 20:57

Okay, we are back. What was it like, Cristina, after you had the surgery? Because I I think it's good for people to know if anyone is ever considering being a living donor. What did recovery look like? Was it the same as it would be if you were having any other surgery?

Cristina Fontana 21:15

You know, I think it's very individualized. Okay. I had had three C-sections. And let me tell you, I think kidney donation was a lot easier than the three C-sections. Normally it's a laparoscopic surgery. Okay. So they have three little areas in your belly where they insert the laparoscopic instruments, a little area in your belly button, and then there's about an area about four or five inches wide towards the bottom of your belly where the surgeon actually inserts his hand once the key kidney is freed up and takes it out. So it is a big surgery, right? Um, I was in the OR, I think four to five hours. Um, the expectation is that donors remain in the hospital anywhere from two to four days. I went home the next day.

Michele Folan 22:01

Oh, wow.

Cristina Fontana 22:02

Surgery was a Thursday, and I went to pick up my son at school Friday. And when we were in the pickup line, my son is like, wait, mom, what are you doing in the car? And I'm like, I'm going home. So I recovered really, really easily. The hardest thing for me was not to exercise. You have to really, you have weightlifting restrictions for the first six weeks and then other weightlifting restrictions for the first 12 weeks. You can walk, you can't lift weights. I love doing hot yoga. I couldn't do any hot yoga, any backward bends, anything that would stretch your belly. That was incredibly difficult. Um recovery was was easy. I mean, compared to compared to, like I said, C-sections, it was way easier. So physically, it was easier. Emotionally, it was a little bit of a roller coaster. Okay. There were good days and bad days. I didn't know who I was donating to, right? So, you know, I think meeting my recipient is what made all the difference in the world.

Michele Folan 23:06

All right. One thing. And I'm going to talk about your recipient. But the fact that, and this is this is a little lesson for anyone that's going to have surgery. If you are fit, you take great care of yourself, your recovery from surgery will be so much better. And I tell people this all the time. Yes. It's it's really working out, eating well, getting good sleep, all those things matter and add up when you are looking at a surgery recovery. So I I applaud you because that certainly was the case with you. All right. When did you meet your donor or that donee? I met him the day I left the hospital.

Cristina Fontana 23:53

So the day after surgery. You did? I don't yeah. The day after surgery, the the living donor advocate and the surgeon came to my room and he said, Do you have any idea who you donated to? And I said, No. And he said, Well, I'm going to tell you he's 20 years old and your kidney is peeing buckets. And um, if you would like to meet him, you can go to his room. Um, we need to get an interpreter though, because of all things, he's Hispanic. And I bursted out laughing. And they're like, Well, why are you laughing? And I'm like, I don't need an interpreter. Spanish is my native language. That's so awesome. So I got off with my husband helping me, and I walked all the way down to his room, and there he was laying in bed, and I started speaking to him in Spanish, and he looked at me like, Who is this person? And I said, I am your donor. Oh, and he his mom was there, his brother. I mean, there were tears everywhere, and he was the age of one of my kids. It was like giving life again to someone else, right? Yeah. Sweetest young man, incredible. I mean, like I said, emotionally, that was the moment when I realized, you know, not knowing who I was giving it to for many people would be like, no, I would never do that. I would give it to my husband or my daughter or my son, someone I know. Who are we to choose who you give it to? We're we're all connected somehow, right? And it just showed me how easy it is to love, to love someone that seconds ago was a complete stranger. Yeah. And seconds later, I had given him a new chance at life.

Michele Folan 25:41

What was his story, Cristina? Why did he need the kidney?

Cristina Fontana 25:45

He was born with something called IgA nephropathy, which is uh a disease that affects the kidneys. And when he was in high school, he started not feeling well and he went to the emergency room thinking he had a flu or not feeling good, and they told him, Hey, your kidneys are failing. We need to put you on dialysis right away. So, you know, it was something that he was born with that didn't develop till later in life. So, you know, nothing he could do about it, right? Yeah.

Nutrition Hydration And Plant-Based Living

Michele Folan 26:13

Did any of this your experience, not just in the health world, having the RN background? What made you want to become a faster way coach, just to be a health coach for other people?

Cristina Fontana 26:27

So, you know, once you're done donating a kidney, your life really doesn't change in many ways. But there's a few things that you have to monitor for the rest of your life. One of the things you had to monitor is how much protein you eat. Um, the other one, we can never ever again take NCIDs, so ibuprofen, a leave, you know, things like that. What it's called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Um, and you really have to drink lots and lots and lots of water. So I was okay not taking the NCIDS, you know. Um, at the time I was still menstruating and, you know, I would get horrible pain from menstruation, and I knew I couldn't take mitol, I couldn't take Advil, I couldn't take any of those. But I was like, that's a small price to pay. I'm okay with that. I'll just tough it out, right? I already drank a lot of water because, you know, just to pass the living kidney donor test, they the teams check you for anything and everything you can possibly imagine. So I knew I was healthy enough to donate. But you know, in nursing school and medical school, they don't teach us a lot about nutrition. So I was like, well, how do I know how much protein I'm supposed to eat so that my only kidney doesn't go on overdrive? Because what happens with protein that I want people to understand, protein, if you would look at it under a microscope, protein is a large molecule compared to fats or carbs. When we eat too much protein, what happens is your body utilizes what it needs, but what it doesn't need, it's filtered out of your kidneys and you excrete protein in your urine. Okay. When you excrete just a little bit, it's not a big deal. But our kidneys have these tiny, tiny microscopic tubules. So when you eat a ton of protein and your body doesn't need it, your body's not gonna use it, and you exit that protein through your kidneys, as it's passing through these tubules, it has to stretch them. Stretching them one time, Thanksgiving dinner, you ate a ton of turkey, not a big deal. Stretching them every single day with every single meal, years and years and years, eventually you're gonna stretch those tubules and it's gonna stay stretched. They're never gonna go back down to their original size. So they're not gonna act as filters anymore. So at that point, everything is gonna go through, and then you end up in kidney failure. So for us kidney donors, one of the big things they teach you is to watch the amount of protein. Recommendation for kidney donors is one gram of protein per kilo of weight per day. For healthy adults is one gram of protein per pound of weight per day. So kilo and pounds, you know, you have to divide it by 2.2. So pretty much I eat half of the protein uh that you would eat, for example. Okay, both have the same weight. So you weigh 140 pounds, you can eat 120, 140 grams of protein. I can eat 70. Okay. So for me, it was really hard to try to figure that out. And I remember talking to one of my nurse friends about it, and she goes, Oh, there's a program called Faster Weight, where we track macros. And I'm like, What are macros? And I'm a nurse. I'm like, what are macros? She's like, Oh, it's your proteins, your carbs, your fats, and we teach you how much to eat of everything so that it's good for you and you can decide whether you want to maintain weight, lose weight, gain weight. And so I started looking into it and was fascinated by it. Because, like I said, us nurses, doctors, they don't teach us anything about nutrition. We learn like the minimum necessary. So I was fascinated by it. I did it for several years. I quit, as many people do. I'm like, I can do this on my own. No, I miss the community terribly. I came back and then I decided, you know what? I'm gonna be a coach and I'm gonna help other donors who are going through this and midlife women to know how much to eat. So that's how I was introduced to it.

Michele Folan 30:08

Oh, that's that's a circuitous way to get introduced to it. But I mean, it just goes to show you that there's so many reasons in life to watch what we eat and you know, health reasons, you want to, it's vanity or whatever it is, but it's it's helpful to get that coaching so that you know what you're doing.

Cristina Fontana 30:31

So and I've never left since. I've been doing Fastaway for seven years. Oh, that's amazing. And I follow it, I coach it, you know, and and it keeps me healthy. Because you know what? Six months into my kidney donation, I had my yearly labs. So we follow kidney donors for two years. Transplant centers are required to follow donors for two years, then you continue following with your primary care physician the rest of your life. But from a transplant center perspective, we are we're only followed for two years. And we get two things, well, three things measured your GFR, the amount of protein in your urine, how much protein you're actually spilling in your urine. And uh, there was one more, one another blood test. It's it's escaping me now. And my lab values were normal, but someone would have known something was wrong. I was either going into kidney failure or I was a donor. My transplant surgeon, Dr. Powelson, is vegan. And when I went for my six-month follow-up, he was like, you know, your labs look good, you know, eventually your kidney will normalize, you know, because what happens is that your remaining kidney grows. Oh, okay. You don't develop more filters, but the kidney hypertrophies to take up the job of the other kidney. So it's you lose 50%, but you only lose about 20% kidney function. Okay, but that 20% can look abnormal. He said, Why don't you follow a plant-based diet and track your protein? So I was like, Okay, I can track my protein. I'm already doing faster way. At the time, Fast Away did not have plant-based, it was only regular Fast Away. So I started looking into that on my own. And six uh, my next six-month follow-up, so my year and then my two years, my labs were perfectly normal. And ever since, my labs have been perfectly normal. So if you look at my labs, you can't tell I'm missing a kidney. I'm feeling wow.

Michele Folan 32:24

Are you still vegan?

Cristina Fontana 32:25

Yes, I still eat plant-based. All right. Interesting. Yeah.

Michele Folan 32:31

I'm not sure, Christina, I could ever do that.

Cristina Fontana 32:35

I didn't think I could either. But when your health means, you know, if you do this, you know, your labs are going to be normal and you know, then you do it for health reasons. Yeah.

Michele Folan 32:47

Oh, I get that. I mean, I, you know, if someone told me it's this or you know, I would I would say, okay, yeah, sure, sign me up. But now as things are right now, that would be very difficult for me.

unknown 33:01

All right.

Cristina Fontana 33:02

If you ever decide you want to go that way, let me know.

unknown 33:05

Okay.

Michele Folan 33:07

All right.

Metamorphosis Grief Guilt And Healing

Michele Folan 33:08

We've got to talk about your book. Um, Metamorphosis. Yes. I would love to know what loss catalyzed the book. And I I think I know, but please share.

Cristina Fontana 33:21

So um, as we shared at the very beginning, my dad got sick with kidney cancer when I was nine. And he died when I was 14 years old. My mother never remarried. So my entire life, I grew up with my mom being mom and dad. And, you know, when you go through a loss that big, you can either let it define you or you can rise from it. And I called it metamorphosis because it really felt, you know, when you're this little caterpillar, which I was, you know, a 14-year-old girl do in life, and and everything is swept away from underneath you. You know, my friends would talk about, oh, what do you want for Christmas? And they wanted all these things. And I remember thinking, I just want my dad back. Oh, you know, I felt like I was going into this cocoon, this dark cocoon tight where I couldn't even breathe. And at the time, you think it's the end of the world. And I thought that was the end of the world for many, many years. And then all of a sudden, you're able to come out of the cocoon and you're able to breathe, and you realize you've emerged into this beautiful butterfly that you had no idea you could become. And you know, even two people going through the same grief, like my sister and I have grieved and done life very differently. So everybody's different. So it was that deep loss that propelled me into writing my book. Initially, I was going to write it only for my kids because they wanted to know the story about losing my dad and Venezuela and my parents and Italy. And so I was like, you know, the day I die, I want them to have something to read, to know our history, right? And as I was writing the book, an editor found me and she was like, I think this needs to be more than just for your children. I think this needs to be for anyone going through grief, for any woman going through a difficult time, you know. But I had written part of my book already, and I'm like, that means I have to start from scratch, because the way you write when you're writing something to your a letter to your children is different than what you would write if I'm writing something for the entire world to know, right? Right. So I pretty much had to start from scratch. Changing the tone, changing the tone because you're changing who your reader is. So keeping some things for them, and the book is dedicated to them, but so that everybody else there could see that, you know, when you think life is the end of the world, it's not. You just have to have an open heart, you have to see what what happens, what what what the world has to offer and be open to the possibilities, right? And that's what I did. I I realized that I wanted to live and do all the things my dad couldn't do. You know, that that you know, you never know when your time is gonna come. I mean, I didn't certainly didn't expect my dad to get sick and when I was nine and die when I was 14. So I lived my entire life guarding time as the most precious thing there is, you know, um, and living as if I were dying. You know, I never I never wanted to go to bed mad. I never want, you know, if I could do something good for someone else, why wait till until tomorrow? I don't know if I have tomorrow. Let's do it today. So that kind of thing. So that has what has propelled me and brought me to where I'm at today. Yeah.

Michele Folan 36:41

You know, you you talk about grief holding us back from really living life. And I that such a poignant comment that you made about you have to be open. You have to open your heart to healing. Because if you if you don't, what you're saying is it it just the grief will just you're you're feeding the grief by not opening yourself up to healing.

Cristina Fontana 37:08

Yeah. Instead of having that mentality, why me? Which I did have it for some years because I think it's a normal part of the grieving process. Well, why not me? If God has chosen me, there must be a purpose. And you know, when I donated my kidney was the first time I really realized 360 degrees that I was meant to go through what I went through and losing my dad, moving to a different country. All the things I'd been through had been preparing me to give so selfishly to someone I didn't know. Like that was that was the purpose of my life, is to give that gift. And you give that gift through the podcast that you do to your listeners, to donating a kidney, to being a nurse, being a teacher, whatever you do in life, there is a purpose to what why we chose to do what we do. Being a health coach, right? You don't know how many people you touch. Yeah, you know, and so I think in the book, you know, one of the things that I want to reiterate is when you're going through grief or something extremely difficult, stop and pause for a minute and think, how would they want me to live? How can you honor them moving forward? They don't want you to stay in bed all day. They don't want you not to eat, not to work out, not to live, not to love. They want because they loved you too, because as as big as the love is, that's how big your grief is going to be. But that's also how much bigger you're going to emerge and how much you can do.

Michele Folan 38:42

You know, I think for some people that tend to hold on to grief, it's because they feel guilty moving forward.

Cristina Fontana 38:49

Oh, yeah. There is guilt. There's guilt every time I reach one of those summits. And I think, why am I able to do this? And so many people are sick in hospital bed. There's always guilt. Can I be truly happy again when they've died? But you know what? You need to honor them. You need to be happy for them because that's how they would want you to live. You need to talk about them, you need to remember them during Christmas. Say their place at the table. In Christmas, we we tend to eat things that my both my parents used to love that we don't love, but we have them at the table and we tell our kids, eat a bite of this because of your grandpa, or eat a bite of this because of your grandma. She used to love this. So we've always talked about them. But that time where there's that fine line where you feel like I shouldn't be happy, or you feel guilty of being happy, that's just called living. Those are stages of grieving and eventually acceptance when you accept that they're gone, but that's their life, but your life continues. You're still here for a reason and for a purpose. How would they want to see you living? Yeah. That's when you rephrase

Donor Athletes Treks And Waitlist Impact

Cristina Fontana 40:00

it.

Michele Folan 40:00

We need to talk about your climbing Kilmanjaro and your the whole story behind this because it really is fascinating.

Cristina Fontana 40:10

Yeah. So um, a few years after donation, I uh found a group of um donors called kidney donor athletes. They're online. You can find them online on Facebook, Instagram. There's they have a page. And it's a group of people just like me, I don't consider myself an athlete, right? But that have donated a kidney and want to show the world that you can live a long, healthy, vibrant life just with one kidney. So sometimes, in order to get the attention of the media, in order to get the attention of the world, you have to do things that are a little bit out of the ordinary, right? So KDA, kidney donor athlete, uh, promotes these living donor treks all over the world. So I, my first one was Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, which is the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, 19, uh341 feet of elevation. I've done um Ever Space Camp. We did Patagonia, the Fitzroy, you know, we did Grand Canyon Rim to Rim this year. I'm getting ready to go to Italy to the dolomites and do the dolomites in September with a KDA. So it's a way for me to do it and so that people can see who are these people that are doing this. Normal people wouldn't do it, let alone a group of kidney donors. But if we can do it and we only have one kidney and we have to watch our hydration, we have to watch our water, we have to watch our protein, and anybody can do it. Okay. And we want to show the world because sometimes I saw this when I worked as a transplant coordinator. Many people don't come forward to donate because they think it's really going to affect their life negatively. Well, I'm not going to be able to live the same life I live now if I give one kidney. That's not true. Actually, there are studies that show that living kidney donors tend to outlive the rest of the population. The reason for that is because since we know what we've done and we take such good care of ourselves, we tend to pay more attention to our labs, to the things that we eat, to the exercise that we do, to the hydration, to all those things, which you probably do too, but I'm really attuned into it because I only have one kidney, right? Right. So these tracks and the kilimanjaro and the ever space camp and all these tracks that I do every single year, they're not really for me. They're to show the world what a collective group of people can do. And if we can do it and we're okay, yeah, you can do it. That's that only the kidney. Yeah. So yeah. But like I said, you know, every time I reach one of those summits and I do one of those things, I always think, I'm always thinking about my recipient and I'm always thinking about the list. There's over a hundred thousand people in the US waiting for a kidney. And I think usually there's a story behind it, like IU Health will do a story or the news will interview us. And my hope is if one person listens to this and says, you know what, I'm gonna call in the transplant and get tested. As soon as one person gets removed from the list, everybody moves down a step. So the next person is closer and the next person is closer. So for me, that is one person is all we need to come forward, right? With one of these tracks to make a difference in the world.

Michele Folan 43:23

Wow, you are inspiring. I have to say, you know, we we we talk about we would always, always donate to a family member. I don't think there'd be a question in my mind that if I had the opportunity to do that. But for you and all the very selfless people in your group to give to a perfect stranger, I think is commendable. And what a lovely, lovely gift, a gift of life to give.

Cristina Fontana 43:53

Yeah, nothing greater.

Michele Folan 43:55

Yeah, that's so wonderful.

Nonnegotiables Book And Community Links

Michele Folan 43:57

All right. This is this is a question. What is one of your non-negotiable self-care practices?

Cristina Fontana 44:05

I think the very top one, the number one for me is my hydration. Having one kidney, I really drink, you know, almost a gallon of water every single day. And we know that water in and of itself is not enough. So I always add electrolytes to my water. So that is, you know, I wake up, I have a glass of water on my night table. Before my feet hit the ground, I drink a big glass of water and I continue my day drinking water all the time. So hydration is huge. And I think another one because I learned about it is tracking my protein, knowing how much protein I need to eat. Because you know what? Even though I've been doing this for seven years and I eat intuitively, when I don't track, I'm always undereating protein. And I eat a lot less than you. Think about it. If if if I need to eat 70 or 75 grams and I know I'm under eating, I'm sometimes some days not even getting 50 grams. And to do these tricks and to train and to lift weights, the only way muscle grows and the only way you stay strong, you need to have that protein. Okay. So protein in every meal. I have protein at breakfast, even if I have oatmeal, I will put peanut butter, I will add egg whites, I will always have protein in every meal. And it's so funny because my kids even know it. You know, my youngest grew up, me being a faster way coach, the older two had already left the house. But Alex can tell you all the time, Mom, Mom, you're not having any protein tonight, or where's your protein? Or we go to a restaurant, it's like, okay, we're having pasta. Well, where's your protein? So I'll always ask for extra chicken or shrimp, or you know, I don't eat meat anymore, but I do do fish. So the shrimp. Yep. So that's non-negotiable. Those two I would say are my biggest ones.

Michele Folan 45:43

You know, and Cristina's telling a very good story here because we hammer our our clients all the time about making sure you're eating enough protein. So, in perspective, I try to get about 110 grams per day. And some days it's easier than others. But as women, we don't process protein as efficiently as we did when we were younger. So we need to eat more than we did when we were younger as well, except unless you have donated kidney and then that's a different story, but so interesting. I appreciate you sharing that. And then, Cristina, where can listeners find your book and connect with you? So my book is on Amazon.

Cristina Fontana 46:30

Okay. Um, this is what it looks like. Okay. So it has a little blue butterfly and it says Metamorphosis, the gift of a life live twice. You have to put my name down at C-R-I-S-T-I-N-A. I think there's several other metamorphosis books out there. Franz Kafka, there's a bunch of other books. So if you unless you put my name, it doesn't come out. Um, so it's on Amazon. It's also on there's a there's a couple other places. Uh Barnes and Noble. I realized recently that Barnes and Noble's was carrying my book. I was very surprised and very happy about that. And it's also in Italian in Amazon. So I had it translated in Italian because a lot of my family is Italian and my family wanted to know the story why I had donated. Okay. And and my dad, it was Italian. So that part of the family needed it in Italian. So maybe one day I'll do it also in Spanish. But every time you do one of these books and you translate it to a different language, it's like writing the book for the first time again. So I need a minute before I have had to class. Are you gonna do it in Spanish? It's like I just I need a minute. Yeah, it launched last October, so it's it's fairly new. I have a website, uh, Cristinafontana wellness.com. I'm on Instagram, criselba.wellness. Alba is the island from where my ancestors came from. So that's in the book too. So um it's on Ingram Spark. If bookstores want to sell the book, they can go and get it for a big discount on Ingram Spark and then sell it at retail price. So there's a big discount. Um, so yeah, that's where it's at right now.

Michele Folan 47:59

Well, fantastic! Cristina Fontana, thank you so much for being a guest today. This was a wonderful conversation.

Cristina Fontana 48:07

Thank you so much for having me. It's been my pleasure.

Michele Folan 48:10

Before you go, thank you for being here. If you want to go a little deeper, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode. That's where I link anything we mentioned, resources, partners, or tools I actually use and trust. And if you're not already on the Asking for a Friend community newsletter, that's where I share practical midlife tips, favorite finds, recipes, and the things that don't always make it onto the podcast or Instagram. You'll find the link to join in the show notes. Take care, and I'll see you next week.