By N. Clark Judd

Susan Smelin, 54, director of the Riverdale Nursery School and Family Center and a Riverdale resident for 25 years, is in desperate search of a kidney.

Ever since she was 12 she knew she had polycystic kidney disease, a genetic illness she shares with both her siblings and which causes the kidneys to fill up with cysts, making them almost useless.

Last year, doctors at Columbia Presbyterian told her it had reached the critical point: end-stage renal disease. Her nephrologist recommended she make preparations for dialysis — a blood purifying technique used to compensate for the lack of a functioning kidney — no later than the beginning of July, she said. By then she will need to undergo a surgery to prepare her veins for dialysis.

Unless she finds a kidney transplant she will likely spend the rest of her life either going to a dialysis clinic three days a week or getting home dialysis more often.

During these sessions she will be hooked up to a machine that will purify her blood, but the treatment has side effects including infections, pain and fatigue. Not everyone reacts well to it, says Ms. Smelin, and not everyone even survives long enough to get a transplant.

It’s estimated that it will take five to seven years — the wait time for her blood type in her New York catchment area — before her name comes up on the national waiting list, she said she was told. Though she is duplicating her efforts in other states, time is quickly running out before she has to start treatment.

“My kidney failure just nosedived,” she said of the immediacy of her condition.

Now she is looking toward the neighborhood she has been active in for years for a donor.

“Dialysis … it’s not a good option for anyone,” said Ms. Smelin. “Part of why I want to do this, frankly it’s not just for my own donor but to raise awareness about this whole issue. People assume you can do dialysis … but it breaks the body down.”

“You live your life hooked to a machine three times a week,” she said.