'Let Me Stay With My Family': LI Native Seeks Kidney Donor

GREAT NECK, NY — A Great Neck South High School graduate who desperately needs a kidney transplant is asking the community for help. Now a resident of Livingston, New Jersey, Gail Korkhin and her family are sharing her story in hopes an altruistic stranger might see her message and, in a very real sense, save her life.

After a nearly decade-long medical struggle, Korkhin’s kidney function now hangs around only 10 percent. Unless she finds someone willing to donate a kidney on her behalf soon, Korkhin will have to go on dialysis — and possibly wait years on hospital waitlists for a healthy kidney.

Korkhin, whose peers from the Great Neck South Class of 1979 might know better as Gail Goldstein prior to her marriage to Boris Korkhin, grew up in Great Neck. She attended Cutter Mill School and Lakeville Elementary School before continuing to Great Neck South Middle School and Great Neck South High School.

As a middle and high-schooler, Korkhin was active on the gymnastics and track teams. She "loved going to school and participated in my community," her family's GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign said. Korkhin's mother, now retired, also worked as a paraprofessional for four decades at Great Neck North High School.

After graduating, Korkhin went to SUNY Albany, before obtaining her paralegal certificate at Adelphi University. For the past 30 years, she's worked as a paralegal, which is how she was introduced to her husband — "the love of my life," she wrote on her fundraising campaign.

When a coworker suggested her cousin — Korkhin’s now-husband — for a meetup, Korkhin initially denied and said she wasn’t interested. A few months later, the coworker suggested the idea again. Korkhin relented and gave in to a date.

"So then I went out with him once,” she told Patch in a phone interview Wednesday. "We hit it off, and six months later in 1989, we were married."

Six years prior, Korkhin learned she would not be able to conceive a child while taking a certain medication for a long-term personal issue. So she called it a "miracle" when she reached out to a newspaper and found a pregnant woman who was looking to give up her baby for adoption in 1994.

“I said, of course, I’d take the baby,” Korkhin said. She flew down to Alabama when the woman, named Katherine, delivered a baby girl, whom Korkhin and her husband named after the biological mother.

And like that, the three of them — in addition to their yorkipoo Hiro, named after the animated character from Disney’s “Big Hero 6” — were a family. Korkhin’s daughter Katherine, now 26, also works as a paralegal in Livingston.

The medication Korkhin had been taking for 25 years, however, came with other side effects — ones that developed into the medical situation she finds herself in today.

In 2012, Korkhin learned her kidneys would eventually fail as a direct result of her medication. It took four years for a doctor to prescribe her an alternative drug with no such side effects. But by then, the damage was done.

"From now on, it was only the path into the abyss. My creatinine continued to rise and my filtration rate continued to fall,” Korkhin wrote in her fundraising campaign. “God blessed me with a wonderful family but my kidneys kept deteriorating.”

Her doctor said she needs a transplant as soon as she can find a living donor. If she can’t find one in time, she’ll go on dialysis and "just hope" and wait for a cadaver kidney.

Neither her daughter nor husband can donate their kidneys to save the life of their beloved mother and wife.

“I don't have any other family that can donate. There's no one else in my family who is healthy enough to donate,” Korkhin said.

So, the family is sending out urgent calls for help, looking for a kidney donor and financial support.

“It’s a really generous thing to do to save someone’s life,” Korkhin said. By donating a kidney, "you could save a life that way. And I'm hoping through these Patch articles, someone might read my story and decide they want to be altruistic and donate their kidney to me."

Korkhin emphasized that even if a prospective donor’s kidney is not a match for her, they could participate in a matching program in which the donor would give their kidney on Korkhin’s behalf, and she would receive a kidney transplant in return. That’s the kind of program that saved numerous lives in 2018 through a 29-person “kidney donor transplant chain” in Essex County, New Jersey, when multiple community members donated their kidneys to strangers.

Any prospective donors to Korkhin should contact Renewal, a Jewish organization that facilitates matching between living kidney donors and recipients and that was introduced to Korkhin by a Great Neck South Class of 1979 classmate.

All costs of donating a kidney will be covered by Korkhin’s health insurance, and information shared will be kept confidential with the transplant team. All blood types are accepted.

Donations to the family’s GoFundMe campaign will support the costs of an immunosuppressant medication Korkhin needs but that is not covered by her health insurance, in addition to the costs of hospital stays, hotel stays and travel — expenses incurred as her family seeks medical help from hospitals throughout New England.

“God bless anyone who would be so kind as to donate life and let me stay with my family,” Korkhin wrote. “Thank you.”

Anyone interested in helping is asked to please contact Katherine Korkhin by email at kkorkhin@gmail.com. All prospective donors should contact Renewal at (718) 431-9831.