When Lauren Seifried stepped onto Jim Blacklock Field at Montgomery County High School on Sept. 12, she was thrilled to hear the sounds of the drums, trumpets and flutes all over again.

She has returned for another year as Montgomery County R-II band teacher after undergoing a kidney transplant that forced her to miss the last two months of the 2024-2025 school year.

“I’m really happy to be back,” Seifried said.

She is also happy that she’s healthy again with three kidneys, two in the back and one in the front.

“It’s a cool, fun fact that you can tell people that you have three kidneys,” Seifried said. “Some people have four. I hope I don’t have to have four for at least 30 years. If that day comes, it comes. We’ll go with it.”

Seifried can thank her mother, Tammy, for the extra kidney. Tammy was a perfect match to offer a kidney to her daughter during the kidney transplant at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis on April 1.

“My mom gave the ultimate sacrifice, so everything else for me is like icing on top of the cake,” the 27-year-old Seifried said.

A 2016 graduate of Aurora High School, Seifried is in her third year as R-II band teacher. She was hired for the job in 2023, replacing Casey Dillon-Chipman, who is now a counselor at Montgomery County High School.

“I texted Casey Dillon-Chipman because she’s a Truman grad,” Seifried said. “We both went to Truman. I saw that she was leaving the position. She posted on Facebook or something.”

But just four months into the job, she received devastating news. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called IgA nephropathy, also known as Berger’s disease. It attacked both of Seifried’s kidneys. A year later, she went into renal failure, forcing her to go into dialysis.

“I used my Christmas break to go because you have to be trained for dialysis so you can do it at home,” Seifried said. “So over Christmas break, I was trained on how to do dialysis. My first training was the day after Christmas. So I trained after Christmas and then into the New Year. Then, I took it home and I was on dialysis for January, February and March.”

Seifried went through peritoneal dialysis, which uses the lining of the abdomen to filter waste and excess fluids from the blood. She did dialysis for eight hours a day, five days a week for three months.

“It was really hard,” Seifried said. “Beyond dialysis and working was probably the hardest thing I have ever done just because the fatigue that you have with dialysis is like a different kind of fatigue. It never goes away. You never feel rested ever. You can sleep forever and still wake up the same. It’s a continuous cycle.”

When Seifried found out her mother was eligible to become a donor, she was ecstatic.

“The process to go through transplants is pretty long, but once you get onto the transplant list, they can start to find a match for you,” Seifried said. “It took me a while to get on the transplant list, but after that, my mom was a match. We got really lucky. They were kind of like, ‘When do you want to do it?’”

Tammy Seifried, a nurse practitioner, said when she got selected as a match, she didn’t waste any time deciding to help save her daughter’s life.

“If you ask any parent, it’s without question the first thing you would do,” she said. “There was no question in my mind that if I was a match, I would be first in line.”

After the transplant, Tammy Seifried went back to work in three weeks, while Lauren Seifried stayed home for the final two months of the school year to recuperate.

Pam Walton, who retired as the R-II music teacher after the 2023-24 school year, substituted for Seifried. She orchestrated the R-II Spring Band Concert on May 12 at Montgomery County Middle School. Seifried was in attendance, wearing a mask.

“I owe her everything,” Seifried said. “I can’t tell you what a generous, amazing and wonderful person she is for doing that. I wholeheartedly believed that she did it for me.”

Now, Seifried is leading a high school band with a strong turnout this fall. There are 30 members in the band, which performed the National Anthem and did a halftime performance at the MCHS football game against North Callaway on Sept. 12.

“The craziest thing about all of this besides my personal stuff that went on is last year, I had eight kids out on the field,” Seifried said. “I had four wind players, I had four guards and I had a couple of percussion (players) up front. But really, there were eight kids you see out there on Friday night. This year, I had no idea how it happened. Maybe it’s the relationships I built with the kids that were so strong that I grew the program.”

Tammy Seifried said she is happy that her daughter is continuing her love with band. Lauren Seifried began competing in band when she was in sixth grade. She played the clarinet.

“It’s really good for her,” Tammy said. “She really enjoys the kids. It distracts her from thinking about the chronic issue. She loves band. It runs in her bloodstream, so to speak.”

Lauren said she was amazed with the support she got from the Montgomery County community for the last several months.

“People are really generous if you just lean on other people because I can’t tell you how many times I really tried to do it on myself and feel like, ‘No, it’s OK. I don’t need the help.’ But I did need help,” she said. “There were people right next to me who were willing to drop everything and help me, especially at the school and all of my colleagues. Just ask for help and keep going. That’s all you can do.”