Gary Coleman lived without any kidneys for nearly 25 years
The former child star lost his last kidney in 1985 while still starring on "Diff'rent Strokes."
If you know Gary Coleman, it's likely due to his iconic performance as the precocious orphan Arnold Jackson on Diff'rent Strokes. You may know that Coleman stayed around 4'8" his whole life due to a kidney condition. Gary, Peacock's new documentary about the troubled life of the late actor, reveals something few fans know — Coleman lived without any kidneys for nearly 25 years.
"The kidney that had been transplanted" into Coleman's body at the age of 5 and allowed him to make it to adulthood, explains lifelong friend Dion Mial in the doc, "was absorbed by the body. So from Dec. 1, 1985, until his death [in 2010], Gary lived without a single kidney in his body."
Gary traces Coleman's life from his humble origins in Zion, Ill., to superstardom on Diff'rent Strokes before he'd even reached teenagedom, to his rocky adult life, which was beset by turbulent relationships, exploitative financial entanglements, and a struggle to maintain his acting career.
Coleman's mother Sue remembers that "at about 2 years old, Gary started to run a temperature, and that's when they found out that he had this congenital kidney defect." Coleman was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a degenerative kidney disease which causes irreversible internal scarring.
"When he was 5 1/2, we got the news that they had a kidney for him," Coleman's mother says. Coleman's body quickly took to the new kidney and he quickly recovered in kind. "Two weeks after he had his surgery he was standing on his head," she recalls. Coleman himself concurred in a segment of archival audio: "Even when I was 5, I was the do or die, never say die, 'I'll be back' kind of person. That was the kind of kid I was."