When I was a child I was unable to go to any type of sleepaway summer camp because of health issues. Once I learned about the Lopez Foundation I knew I wanted to get involved send kids with kidney disease away to camp so they can still experience overnight camp with medical needs at hand.

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys leaving an ugly wound.

In fact when you combine stem cell technology with the technology known as tissue engineering you can actually grow up entire organs so as you suggest that sometime in the future you get in an auto accident and lose your kidney we'd simply take a few skin cells and grow you up a new kidney. In fact this has already been done.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs my kidneys my liver my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

Twenty million more have Chronic Kidney Disease where patients experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function the end result of which is kidney failure.

African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans.

You know that family is going to be there for you no matter what. My dad gave me a freakin' kidney!