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" In September 2010, Angie Hernandez had a chilling conversation with her son Ryan Malloy. The 23-year-old had been on the transplant waiting list since both his kidneys had failed three years earlier. At that point, he was undergoing dialysis several days a week and had been in and out of the hospital dozens of times. &amp;quot;Mom,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know how much longer I can do this. I&amp;#039;m getting tired, and I just don&amp;#039;t know if I can make it.&amp;quot; She was terrified.&amp;quot;If Ryan stopped fighting, I was sure he would die,&amp;quot; says Hernandez, 42. &amp;quot;Every time the phone rang, I was afraid of what I might hear.&amp;quot; Until late 2007, Ryan had been perfectly healthy. He had a job in the wholesale meat-and-seafood business and a fianc\u00E9e he was crazy about. Then he began to cough up blood, and one day in December he started hemorrhaging from his lungs. He was rushed to a hospital in Denver, near their Broomfield, CO, home, and several days later, his kidneys failed. The diagnosis: Good\u00ADpasture&amp;#039;s syndrome, a rare disease in which the body&amp;#039;s immune system attacks the lungs and kidneys. With 90% of his kidney function gone, Ryan was put on dialysis to remove waste products from his body. Although he was warned he had to be conscientious about treatment, it was hard for a 21-year-old whose friends were going to college or starting careers to keep up his dialysis sessions and sit out parties. Without regular dialysis, his electrolytes went out of balance, triggering several cardiac arrests, and his blood pressure rose, leading to a stroke. On one occasion, Hernandez herself, a former nursing assistant, had to perform CPR to keep Ryan alive until the ambulance arrived. See the 11 Most Dangerous Foods That was a turning point, she says. Ryan began to spend hours every week hooked up to a dialysis machine\u2014a procedure that sustained him physically but was emotionally draining. &amp;quot;I became friends with other people who were being treated,&amp;quot; says Ryan. &amp;quot;But it was awful because they kept dying. One week they&amp;#039;d be there, and the next week, their picture would be on the memorial wall. It honestly felt like I was just standing in line, waiting for my turn.&amp;quot; It became harder and harder for him to find good reasons to live. He couldn&amp;#039;t work, couldn&amp;#039;t even afford a car. He&amp;#039;d broken up with his fianc\u00E9e because he wanted to spare her all the trauma. And there was no end in sight. On the day he made that grim comment to his mother, both knew it could well be two or three years before he reached the top of the transplant list. Or longer. Next:   Hernandez was struggling nearly as much as her son. Ryan needed a kidney to stay alive, and she couldn&amp;#039;t provide it. &amp;quot;Unfortunately, no one in our family could, not his father or brothers and sisters,&amp;quot; she says. In her desperation, she had a brainstorm: Why not post a plea for donors on Facebook? Not long before, her cousin had made a three-minute photo montage of Ryan set to The Fray&amp;#039;s song &amp;quot;How to Save a Life&amp;quot; and uploaded it on YouTube. It included pictures of Ryan as a wide-eyed toddler, as a handsome teenager, and then as a bloated 21-year-old with end-stage kidney disease, along with a request for donors. See the 14 Most-Trusted Health Sites The video hadn&amp;#039;t yielded any candidates, but only a few hundred people had viewed it. &amp;quot;It struck me that I had 200 friends on Facebook \u2014 if all of them posted it, we could reach way more people,&amp;quot; Hernandez says. Indeed, if each of her friends had just 100 friends, the video could conceivably be viewed by 20,000 people \u2014 a massive pool of potential donors. Crowdsourcing for Better Health Although she didn&amp;#039;t know it at the time, Hernandez had become part of a cutting-edge trend: peer-to-peer health care. Type the words &amp;quot;kidney donor&amp;quot; in Facebook&amp;#039;s search engine, and you&amp;#039;ll get some sense of the movement&amp;#039;s scope: Hundreds of pages come up. One shows a middle-aged father of two, another a stylish Seattle newscaster. There&amp;#039;s a 59-year-old grandmother and a 26-year-old woman who, according to her bio, &amp;quot;does not have much time left&amp;quot; if she doesn&amp;#039;t receive a new kidney soon. Stories with happy endings have hit the news\u2014like the one about the former mayor of East Haven, CT, who in 2010 donated a kidney to a constituent she had friended on Facebook. Millions of Americans \u2014 one in five, a 2011 survey reported \u2014 turn to social media for health information. A study by the Pew Research Center&amp;#039;s Internet &amp;amp;amp; American Life Project found that one in four Internet users with high blood pressure, diabetes, or other chronic conditions has gone online to find people with the same health problems. There are now hundreds of Facebook pages designed specifically for patients with rare or chronic diseases. Websites like patientslikeme.com and crohnology.com (for people with Crohn&amp;#039;s disease) have also cropped up. PatientsLikeMe was started by two brothers, both MIT engineers, who wanted to learn about the real-world experiences of people with ALS (Lou Gehrig&amp;#039;s disease), which afflicted their other brother. Today the site has grown to nearly 150,000 members with more than 1,000 health conditions \u2014 everything from asthma and psoriasis to breast cancer. In a somewhat unusual arrangement, members help to compile practical data \u2014 responses to medications, for example\u2014for others who have the same condition. (The information, the site clearly discloses, is also shared with researchers and industry.) The &amp;quot;worried well&amp;quot; are using social media sites, too. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve asked my online friends for everything from names of doctors to advice on dealing with my kids&amp;#039; fevers,&amp;quot; says Betsy Lee, 30, a journalist and mom of three in Kansas City, MO. Obviously, you need to be cautious about advice from nonprofessionals. Vet it with a trusted online source \u2014 medlineplus.gov or mayoclinic.org \u2014 or your own doctor. &amp;quot;We often recommend getting a second opinion,&amp;quot; says Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D., a pediatrician at Seattle Children&amp;#039;s Hospital with a popular blog, Seattle Mama Doc. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s even more critical when your information is coming from friends.&amp;quot; Next:   Saving a Son, Healing a Family When Angie Hernandez turned to her Facebook friends, she felt as if it was Ryan&amp;#039;s last chance. She asked each one to post the video of Ryan on his or her Facebook wall on the same day: December 21, 2010. By December 23, ten willing donors had stepped forward, but each was the wrong blood type or had health problems. Hernandez started to panic: What if this doesn&amp;#039;t work? she thought. Then her brother told her he had gotten a call from their sister, Kourtney Wagner, who had seen the video. Her message: &amp;quot;Tell Angie I&amp;#039;d like to help.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I was shocked,&amp;quot; says Hernandez. &amp;quot;She was family, but we hadn&amp;#039;t grown up together because we had different fathers and Kourtney had lived with her dad.&amp;quot; The two women hadn&amp;#039;t seen each other in more than 10 years. &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t believe she&amp;#039;d be willing to do this for us,&amp;quot; says Hernandez. But Wagner, 31, an event coordinator and mom of two kids, ages 7 and 8, was determined. She and her husband did some research on the procedure, and both felt it was the right thing to do. &amp;quot;What I kept thinking was that I&amp;#039;d want someone to help if it were my child,&amp;quot; Wagner says. Initial tests showed that Wagner&amp;#039;s blood was a match for Ryan&amp;#039;s and, just as important, she was fit and healthy. &amp;quot;Once we got those early tests out of the way, I started feeling hopeful for the first time in years,&amp;quot; says Hernandez. Even so, the evaluation process took months. Wagner had to undergo a barrage of medical exams and attend classes to make sure she understood the procedure. Hernandez took her to every appointment, and as the weeks ticked by, their connection grew stronger.&amp;quot; We had lots of time to catch up,&amp;quot; says Hernandez. &amp;quot;We weren&amp;#039;t close when we were little because I&amp;#039;m 11 years older, but that age difference doesn&amp;#039;t matter now. We&amp;#039;re both moms, so our lives are similar.&amp;quot; Finally, on November 15, 2011, both Ryan and Wagner were in the hospital, prepped and ready for surgery. Everyone was anxious \u2014 particularly Hernandez. &amp;quot;Now there were two people I loved and was worried about,&amp;quot; she says. But the 75-minute procedure went incredibly smoothly. Wagner, who came out first, hadn&amp;#039;t even opened her eyes when she whispered, &amp;quot;Everything&amp;#039;s OK now, Ange.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That did it. I started sobbing,&amp;quot; Hernandez recalls. &amp;quot;Kourtney hadn&amp;#039;t just saved Ryan&amp;#039;s life; she&amp;#039;d brought our family back together. It was a better gift than anything I could have hoped for.&amp;quot; Since then, Ryan&amp;#039;s recovery has been speedy. There&amp;#039;s no sign of the Goodpasture&amp;#039;s syndrome, which can resolve with treatment. &amp;quot;I feel better than I&amp;#039;ve ever felt in my life. I&amp;#039;m working again, I go to the gym most mornings, I don&amp;#039;t smoke or drink, and my kidney is functioning perfectly,&amp;quot; says Ryan. &amp;quot;I honestly never thought I&amp;#039;d live to see this day. Thanks to my aunt, I got a second chance, and I&amp;#039;m not going to waste it. I have a whole new respect for life.&amp;quot; Next:   When Leila Grossman, a 41-year-old photographer in Nashville and a single mom of two daughters, was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, she had no idea how she was going to cover her out-of-pocket expenses. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d have to miss a lot of work, because I needed a double mastectomy,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;If I don&amp;#039;t work, I don&amp;#039;t get paid.&amp;quot; Her sister suggested they start a page on giveforward.com, one of the new websites that enable people to solicit financial help for medical expenses. &amp;quot;I resisted \u2014 it was hard for me to ask people for help,&amp;quot; says Grossman. But then a friend convinced her she needed to do it for her girls. The page went up the morning of her surgery, and by the time she was in the recovery room, they&amp;#039;d raised $5,000. Three months later, when she closed the account, she&amp;#039;d received $23,000 in donations, some from complete strangers. &amp;quot;The response was overwhelming,&amp;quot; says Grossman. A Virtual Collection Basket The website Grossman used is one of several \u2014 others include gofundme.com and fundbunch.com \u2014 that help families raise money for medical expenses (or to support other projects). Among GiveForward&amp;#039;s 2,800 active fund-raisers last April were parents who were more than halfway toward their goal of $50,000 for their toddler&amp;#039;s trachea transplant and an Iraq war veteran who had raised over $18,000 to help cover medical expenses for his paralyzed wife.  Making It Work To solicit financial help, it&amp;#039;s important to write a compelling story that explains the patient&amp;#039;s situation, says Erica Trzeciak, director of user relations at GiveForward. &amp;quot;Ask people to contribute money or to help by passing along the information on their social networks,&amp;quot; she advises. Indeed, an estimated 20% of donations on GiveForward come from friends of friends \u2014 people with one or two degrees of separation, who don&amp;#039;t actually know the recipient. Peer Power How to get the most out of social media and avoid regrets \u2022 Find a group that&amp;#039;s active. You&amp;#039;ll get answers more quickly and from a greater variety of sources. \u2022 Think twice about sharing personal info. &amp;quot;Once it&amp;#039;s out there, it&amp;#039;s out of your control,&amp;quot; warns Seattle pediatrician Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D. Private groups, like those on Facebook that are open only to members, may feel safer than public forums, but anything you share online should be considered public, since it can be copied. \u2022 If you&amp;#039;re looking for an organ donor, be cautious about responses from strangers. Ask about their health, their blood type, and if they&amp;#039;d be willing to talk to someone at the transplant clinic, says Jennifer Martin, director of organ-donation programs at the National Kidney Foundation. And if the person asks for money, don&amp;#039;t correspond; it&amp;#039;s illegal to buy or sell organs in the U.S. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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