Bijou Phillips is recuperating after undergoing a kidney transplant.
“I am beyond, beyond grateful to everyone who rushed in to help me, get checked to donate, you are all [heroes]!” Phillips, 46, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, July 7, sharing a hospital selfie. “My wonderful brother [Aron Wilson] donated in the kidney exchange! He saved a life, and the life he saved had a special person donate for them, and then a few weeks later! The voucher program found me a perfect match! So close it’s like I got the kidney from one of my parents!”
Phillips revealed in February that she had been hospitalized after complications from her 2017 kidney transplant. At the time, Phillips was put back on dialysis after one of her kidneys failed. She subsequently searched for a donor to undergo another transplant.
By early July, Phillips found a match through the UCLA hospital’s kidney exchange program. (In a paired donation, living donors are able to donate their organs to another recipient in exchange for a compatible kidney for their relative.)
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“I am so blow[n] away by Dr. Veale and the magic he does,” Phillips wrote of her surgeon. “The kidney exchange, voucher program and his surgical skills!!! He only cut the facia! He didn’t cut the muscles, so I didn’t even really need much pain medication at all, just Tylenol!”
Phillips revealed that her post-op progress “at five days” is comparable to her four-month recovery following her last procedure.
“The technique [my physician] developed is brilliant and he is a lifesaver! Thank you UCLA,” she gushed. “And all the amazing [doctors] and coordinators and nurses and everybody there has been so wonderful and amazing. Thank you so much!!!! @uclahealth, love you Aron! Thank you the most! 🥰🙏🏼.”
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Before her second transplant, Phillips issued multiple public pleas to find a compatible donor.
“Before the first transplant, I went through a dark night of the soul. You get to this point where you have to be OK with your life and think, ‘You know what? I’m proud of myself. I’ve checked all the boxes I wanted to check. I feel confident leaving,’” Phillips exclusively told Us Weekly in February. “[Last time,] I was married and able to let go and be at peace with it. It’s sort of the death of the ego because there’s this part of you that wants to keep going and make another movie and make another album and fight, fight, fight.”
She continued, “Now I’m a single mom and things are different. I want to be here for her, and I have to be here for her. The fight is back. That had been gone for a long time. I’m it. I’m all she’s got.”
Phillips shares daughter Fianna, 12, with ex-husband Danny Masterson, who is currently incarcerated following a sexual assault conviction. (Masterson, 50, maintained his innocence while standing trial.)
