GREENFIELD — Jeremy Goldsher has had “a lot and also not very much” going on in the past 12 months.

The co-founder of Greenspace CoWork has been on dialysis for a year after being diagnosed with end-stage renal disease, a result of the genetic autoimmune disorder IgA nephropathy, or IgAN, in June 2023. But dialysis sessions are not a permanent solution and he appealed to the community to try to find a living donor to save his life.

“My story initially got out and reached quite a few people, and I got a lot of really wonderful folks who I’ve never really met or people in the periphery who went through the initial phases of the process, to try to get tested,” Goldsher recounted. “A couple of those people made it onto … the official roster of people the hospital deemed appropriate to test. One of those people in particular was really dedicated to the process.”

But Goldsher finds himself once again making a public appeal for help, as all promising prospects have fallen through.

The main prospect, who he described as “this angel that descended from heaven,” went to school in this area and ran in similar circles to Goldsher for years, but the two were not close. She is a lawyer whose husband once needed an organ transplant, though he declined to disclose her name to protect her privacy.

The odds of a transplant from this woman seemed promising for about six months until the final day of testing mid-summer, when doctors found some health complications that disqualified her from organ donation.

“It was a really tough situation for a few months during the summer. I went real dark,” he said. “I know that she was pretty devastated because she was very committed and it’s very hard to find people who are that sure of what they want to do from the get-go.”

Anyone who is willing to be screened can visit mghlivingdonors.org and use the following info: Jeremy Goldsher, Birth Date: 02/25/1989. He is being treated at Mass General Hospital. For more information, email Goldsher at jgoldsher@gmail.com or visit the National Kidney Foundation’s website at kidney.org. Blood type is not an important factor.

Goldsher mentioned he had been in a wheelchair for a period and was once confined to his couch. At one point, a medicine prescribed to him for the kidney failure caused internal bleeding.

“I relate a lot more to people who are holed up in a hospital bed, on life support. Because [they are] the people who I am spending my time around,” he said in his business midday on Dec. 6, having come from dialysis that morning. “You know, I sit side by side with people who are missing limbs, who are going through multiple health crises on top of kidney failure. I’ve lost friends who I sit next to.”

Goldsher, a Greenfield native who moved to Ashfield during the pandemic, regularly travels to Fresenius Kidney Care Hampshire County in Northampton to get hooked up to a dialysis machine for hours. Dialysis helps the body remove extra fluid and waste products from the blood when a person’s kidneys are unable to perform that function.

A family member was also forced to drop out of the organ donation process. Every time a person is disqualified, Goldsher starts at the beginning of the process.

“I’ve learned a lot about our health care system. There’s a lot of issues with it, as I’m sure most people will attest to,” he said. “But one of the things that I didn’t realize is a hospital will only test two or three people at a time.”

Goldsher’s mother, Fran, provides occasional rides to dialysis and helps with any tasks he needs completed. She said the past year has been filled with frustrating roadblocks but her son keeps fighting.

“He is a trooper. I’d say there are days he is very sad and there are days he is very reflexive, but he keeps going forward,” she said. “Snowstorms or whatever, he goes in [for dialysis].”

In 2017, the family purchased the Arts Block and created the multifunctional hub the Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center, a nod to the retailer that occupied the downtown space in the 1800s. Jeremy Goldsher also created Greenspace CoWork, a community-based work space at 278 Main St., with Jeff Sauser, who has picked up a great deal of slack amid his business partner’s health problems. Goldsher often works remotely.

Goldsher had displayed symptoms of IgAN for six or seven years before he was properly diagnosed. He said he has quietly battled fatigue, body aches, weight fluctuation, gout attacks and nausea. But he did not learn about his reality until he was camping in New Hampshire and received a call about blood testing results from his doctor’s office. He went straight to the emergency room at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, expecting to stay a few hours, but he did not leave for three weeks.

The past year has put into perspective the emphasis he had placed on his professional career and his fast-pace lifestyle. Goldsher compared his life to “The Bachelor,” the television series about a single man who must choose a fiancée out of a pool of romantic interests.

“I’m in a constant, 24/7 popularity contest, and I want people to look at me and [feel like they] want to give us a rose — or, in this case, a kidney,” he said. “It is so exhausting after doing that show for a year. I don’t want to have to convince people that my life has meaning, but a lot of … that turmoil ultimately comes from within.”

Goldsher said he still works but handles a much lighter load than he used to.

“Everyone has a battle that you don’t know about,” he said. “I’m very far removed from the community that I used to foster and support, and I’m very removed from a lot of the work I used to do on hand.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.