Francia Raisa is spilling on what went down at the time she chose to donate her kidney to longtime friend Selena Gomez.
The 29-year-old Secret Life of the American Teenager actress discussed the transplant experience during her recent appearance on Harry, airing on Monday (February 19).
“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,” Francia told host Harry Connick Jr. “So she’s up and at it immediately and I had a hard time.”
“I basically have four scars,” Francia added. “It was laparoscopic, those mothers out there who had C-sections, I feel you. I don’t know how you take care of a child afterwards. It is crazy! I couldn’t get up without having someone help me. That was very humbling. I couldn’t take a shower by myself, I had to have someone help me because I couldn’t move. I’m a very very active person, so the fact that my doctor said I couldn’t move for 2 months. 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.”
When asked if the outpouring of the support of millions of fans was an encouraging factor in her recovery, Francia replied, “Well, so our surgery was in June, our fans didn’t find out about it until September. We wanted that privacy. It was a big surgery. She felt bad about even having me do that because we are just friends, I am not her family or anything. Well, I am now. She has my blood. She felt bad. 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.”
