Selena Gomez "felt bad" about asking Francia Raisa to undergo a kidney transplant for her last year.
The 25-year-old singer was beyond grateful when her longtime friend agreed to donate her kidney to her in order to help with her ongoing battle with autoimmune disease Lupus, but felt guilty asking the actress to undergo the surgery as Francia wasn’t a member of the ‘Bad Liar’ hitmaker’s family.
Francia said: "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."
And the 29-year-old actress has admitted the surgery was "harder" for her to recover from, as her body lost an organ, rather than gaining one like Selena did.
She added: 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. So she’s up and at it immediately and I had a hard time."
But the ‘Secret Life of the American Teenager’ actress insists the experience was "humbling" as it forced her to rely on other people whilst she healed.
Speaking during an appearance on ‘Harry’, Francia said: "I basically have four scars. 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."
Selena Gomez’ kidney transplant guilt
