A teenage girl who desperately needed a new a kidney has found a donor after her mother put an advert in their local newspaper.
Maria Solecki’s daughter Maya suffered severe damage to her kidneys following an E.coli infection in January 2024.
The 48-year-old from Hadleigh in Essex was tested herself and found not to be a suitable donor for her daughter, as were other family members and her Facebook friends.
In a desperate bid to find a donor, Ms Solecki took the decision to take her appeal to her local newspaper, the Southend Echo, in March 2025.
After the ad went out the mother said around 20 people came forward for testing.
‘Time went on and we sort of waited and Maya was becoming more and more ill and struggling to cope on dialysis,’ said Ms Solecki.
The agonising wait went on until in a ‘very unexpected twist’ the journalist she contacted in the first place, 51-year-old Emma Palmer, turned out to be a match.
The executive assistant for a local charity continued: ‘It wasn’t until November at the end of last year that Emma’s identity was finally revealed once she passed all of the health checks and everything.
Maya Solecki celebrating her last session of dialysis before her transplant. In a desperate bid to find a donor her mother, Maria Solecki, took the decision to take her appeal to her local newspaper, the Southend Echo, in March 2025
Maya with her donor Jane Palmer. In a ‘very unexpected twist’ the journalist Ms Solecki contacted in the first place, Ms Palmer, turned out to be a match
‘You can imagine my reaction. I was incredulous.
‘I could not believe that of all the people we tested, it was actually the journalist who I first made contact with that proved to be a good match and had the operation.’
The transplant operation went ahead in January this year and Ms Solecki said she hopes Ms Palmer, ‘remains part of Maya’s life forever’.
Maya described Ms Palmer as ‘my hero’.
She said: ‘I keep telling her I wish there was a bigger phrase than thank you.
‘When we got the call (saying there was a donor match) it just didn’t feel real.
‘Honestly, I was on my last bit of will power.’
The teenager said she will ‘always have a chronic condition’ but that ‘with this treatment, I do feel better, I feel amazing, I feel the best I’ve felt since I initially got ill’.
Maya described Ms Palmer as ‘my hero’. She said: ‘I keep telling her I wish there was a bigger phrase than thank you. ‘When we got the call (saying there was a donor match) it just didn’t feel real. ‘Honestly, I was on my last bit of will power’
She described it as ‘really bonkers’ and a ‘very unexpected twist’.
The operation went ahead nine weeks ago, and Ms Solecki said while ‘there’s still quite a lot of recovery to do’, her daughter’s life is ‘certainly 100% better’.
‘As a parent there are simply no words of gratitude that are enough for somebody who altruistically comes forward to save the life of your child, a child they don’t even know,’ said Ms Solecki.
Ms Palmer, writing in the Echo, said she decided to get tested to see if she was a match after she learned – in an update after the Echo carried an initial appeal – that no one had yet been found.
Asked why she decided to give a kidney, she said: ‘Why wouldn’t I?
‘I’ve had 50 good years and am blessed with a wonderful and healthy family.
‘To think that a 15-year-old girl – as she was at the time – was having to go through so much and giving up hope just really got to me.’
She said that she has met Maya and her mother twice and ‘I feel like we are family already’.
‘Maya gave me the longest hug I think I’ve ever had in my life when I went to see them and they bought me a wonderful necklace with the date of the operation engraved on it,’ she said.
Ms Solecki said the wait for a donor kidney can be more than three years long and there are some 150 children waiting for a kidney
‘The call to action is for anyone who might want to donate to a child or a young person, please don’t hesitate and get somebody else off dialysis and give them a chance at a normal life,’ she said.
