A Northern Lehigh man is in urgent need of a kidney donation.

Deborah Sell said Wednesday night on social media that her husband of 41 years, Jeff Sell, is in kidney failure.

Sell said Jeff has been on dialysis for four months in need of a kidney transplant, and added they are searching for a living kidney donor.

The couple, who reside in Washington Township, said they were told Jeff went into kidney failure.

“We didn’t even know it; it was detected by labs, blood work,” Deborah said. “He’s been through a lot. We had a really rough year.”

Deborah noted that in June 2024, Jeff was in a vehicle crash, and while in Lehigh Valley Hospital, he had a CAT scan of the chest and a lung nodule was detected.

After a biopsy, it was found Jeff had Stage 1 lung cancer.

“I retired from Lehigh Valley in January of last year to help to take care of him,” said Deborah, who worked there 26 years and was director of physical program and practices at the cancer center.

“I went from that right into a caregiver role for my husband.”

Deborah said that in April, Jeff had a fall and broke his right tibia, and spent three weeks in the hospital and had two surgeries, followed by rehab.

“We were preparing for a kidney doctor appointment, and I was asked, ‘Do you know he is in kidney failure?’ ” she said. “We repeated the labs.”

As luck would have it, Deborah said Jeff spent his 70th birthday at Lehigh Valley Hospital.

“In September is when he had the PD Catheter, and that’s when we started with the dialysis,” she said, adding they’ve been going to Fresenius Kidney Care in Lehighton. “And they’ve been wonderful; they’ve educated me and trained me on how to do this.”

Deborah said they started out with manual dialysis exchanges during the day, and then progressed into the machine cycler in October.

She added that Jeff also has orthostatic hypertension, which is an abrupt increase in blood pressure when a person stands up.

That’s in addition to diabetes, kidney failure, cardiac disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Because of his low blood pressure, Deborah said Jeff has a tendency to fall, which concerns her greatly.

“This is our life; we go to dialysis,” she said. “Right now, I have him going to physical therapy.”

Deborah said that their daughter, Amanda, is getting married April 29 in California.

“I’m trying to get him strong enough to walk her down the aisle,” she said.

“Coming up, we’re flying out of Philadelphia and I have to bring his dialysis machine with me when we get there.”

Deborah said she had hoped to be Jeff’s donor because Lehigh Valley Transplant Center has an exchange program, but she can’t because she’s his sole caregiver.

Anyone willing to be tested as a possible donor should contact Lehigh Valley Transplant Center at 610-402-8506, option 5.

“If someone is a blood match, they (Lehigh Valley Transplant Center) do have an exchange program there they could locate a kidney that could be a direct match to him,” Deborah said. “So many people are organ donors, but nobody thinks of living donors that people can benefit.”

Deborah, who noted the couple met many years ago camping along the Appalachian Trail, stressed what it mean for them.

“We have an RV in our driveway that we have not been able to use. We love the beach. Ocean City, New Jersey, is our happy place,” she said. “It would improve our quality of life greatly; we could start doing some traveling in our RV.”