TRIBUTE: Roberto Medina’s new tattoo reads “Yoly,” for his sister Yolanda, who died during her operation to give him a kidney. (James Messerscmidt; Daniel Prendergast)
Roberto Medina is waiting by the phone for a call that may take five to seven years to come.
Medina joins 7,896 other New Yorkers hoping to get kidneys from dead donors. He was told he’s No. 600 on the list.
“After all this, I really have no hope,” a disheartened Medina told The Post at his home in The Bronx.
Medina was crushed on Friday, after the United Network for Organ Sharing said it could not favor him “based on compassionate grounds” after his sister Yolanda died May 23 in a botched surgery at Montefiore Medical Center.
“I’m back to square one,” he said.
Yolanda, 41, a mother of three, bled to death when a surgeon accidentally cut her aorta, leaving her kidneys unusable.
“Only God gives me the support to stand up after all this,” said the accountant, a married father of four. He touched a new tattoo over his heart, a red rose over a cross marked “Yoly.”
“This is the closest I could get to having her back,” he said.
