Since announcing on Instagram that she received a kidney from her friend Francia Raisa in June 2017, Selena Gomez has remained vocal about her health struggles and how much Raisa contributed to her life. She appeared alongside Raisa in an October 2017 TODAY interview discussing Raisa’s decision and her kidney miraculously matching Gomez’s needs. Now, Raisa has spoken up on her own about her perspective of the life-changing surgery.
Cosmopolitan reports that Raisa opened up about her kidney donation during an interview with Harry Connick Jr. on his show Harry, which is set to air on Feb. 19. If you weren’t already in awe of Raisa’s selfless decision to help her friend, this interview is bound to improve your opinion of her.
“It’s harder as the donor because we are losing something our body didn’t need to lose, so trying to recover from that, and she’s gaining something her body needed,” Raisa said of Gomez benefiting from the surgery. “So she’s up and at it immediately and I had a hard time.”
Now bearing four scars from the procedure, the Grown-ish star also shared about her difficult recovery afterwards. “I couldn’t take a shower by myself, I had to have someone help me because I couldn’t move,” she told Connick. “I’m a very, very active person, so…Two months, I couldn’t do anything active. All I could do was walk. That was very hard for me and I have a dog and every day the thing I look forward to is drinking my coffee and walking and I couldn’t do that. It was really, really hard.”
Gomez required a kidney transplant to cope with complications with lupus, which she was diagnosed with in 2013. In the interview, Raisa touched upon the guilt that Gomez initially experienced over Raisa’s donation, but as we’ve all seen over the past few months, the decision has changed the women’s friendship for the better.
“She felt bad about even having me do that because we are just friends, I am not her family or anything,” Raisa said. “Well, I am now. She has my blood. We just wanted our families around and it was cool because now I have a big family. I lost my grandparents when I was younger… Her grandparents are my grandparents now and so I have this extension of a family and it’s been really amazing.”
Kudos to Raisa for making one of the ultimate sacrifices for her friend and being honest about the physical challenges that came as a result.