Francia Raísa says Selena Gomez downplayed just how life-threatening her kidney transplant recovery actually was
Over the summer, Selena Gomez’s incredible best friend Francia Raísa gave Gomez her kidney. Gomez needed the kidney transplant due to complications from lupus, a situation she described before the transplant as “life or death.” Both Gomez and Raísa have talked about their rough recovery, and Gomez briefly mentioned that her kidney “flipped” after surgery, but it’s only now that Raísa is sharing the whole story on just how life-threatening the hours after Gomez’s kidney transplant really were. Immediately after surgery, Gomez did not react well to the transplant, and Raísa said the situation was so serious that Gomez “could have died.”
"Recovery was hard, Raísa revealed in a new interview with W Magazine. “I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to drink anything. Selena did have a complication, too. A few hours after our surgery, I woke up and had a text from her that said, ‘I’m really scared.’ My kidney was very active, and when she turned, she broke an artery. They had to take her into emergency surgery and get a vein from her leg and build a new artery to keep my kidney in place. She could have died.
After the complicated and worrisome ordeal and their attempts to lay low, Raísa said both of them went through a period of depression.
"We didn’t want to tell anybody because recovery was very hard for us, and we went through a depression at the time, Raísa said. “We kind of just wanted to be normal and not have that attention on us."
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Gomez revealed on Today back in October 2017 that her kidney “flipped” and she had to stay in surgery for six hours, as opposed to the two hours a standard transplant would have taken, but we had no idea how high-risk both women’s surgeries were until now. Now when we see photos of Gomez gleefully riding a bike around her neighborhood, we understand how precious that vibrant health must be to her.
