Bijou Phillips Is 'Beyond Grateful' for Life-Saving Donor Match as She Recovers From Second Kidney Transplant

Bijou Phillips celebrated a major health milestone after successfully undergoing a second kidney transplant.

The actress shared an emotional update with fans, expressing her gratitude for the donor program, her medical team, and her brother, whose selfless act helped make the life-saving surgery possible.

The 46-year-old announced the news in an Instagram post on Tuesday, July 7, alongside a smiling hospital selfie.

Phillips revealed she found a compatible donor through UCLA's kidney exchange voucher program after months of searching.

"I am beyond, beyond grateful to everyone who rushed in to help me, get checked to donate, you are all [heroes]!" she wrote. "My wonderful brother Aron Wilson donated in the kidney exchange! He saved a life, and the life he saved had a special person donate for them, and then a few weeks later! The voucher program found me a perfect match! So close it's like I got the kidney from one of my parents!"

Phillips also credited her surgeon and the UCLA medical staff for making the procedure far easier than she expected.

She said her recovery has been dramatically different from her first transplant nearly a decade ago.

"I am so blow[n] away by Dr. Veale and the magic he does," she gushed. "The kidney exchange, voucher program and his surgical skills!!! He only cut the facia! He didn't cut the muscles, so I didn't even really need much pain medication at all, just Tylenol!"

She added that her progress "at five days" already feels comparable to where she was four months after her previous transplant.

"The technique [my physician] developed is brilliant and he is a lifesaver! Thank you UCLA," Phillips continued. "And all the amazing [doctors] and coordinators and nurses and everybody there has been so wonderful and amazing. Thank you so much!!!! @uclahealth, love you Aron! Thank you the most!"

The successful transplant comes just months after Phillips revealed she had been hospitalized following complications from her 2017 kidney transplant.

After one of her transplanted kidneys failed, she returned to dialysis while searching for another compatible donor.

By early July, Phillips found a match through UCLA's kidney exchange program, which allows living donors to donate a kidney to another recipient in exchange for a compatible organ for their loved one.

Before receiving her second transplant, Phillips reflected on how differently she approached the experience compared to her first surgery.

She said becoming a single mother gave her a renewed determination to keep fighting for her future.

Phillips shares 12-year-old daughter Fianna with ex-husband Danny Masterson.

"Before the first transplant, I went through a dark night of the soul. You get to this point where you have to be OK with your life and think, 'You know what? I'm proud of myself. I've checked all the boxes I wanted to check. I feel confident leaving,'" she told Us Weekly in February.

"[Last time,] I was married and able to let go and be at peace with it. It's sort of the death of the ego because there's this part of you that wants to keep going and make another movie and make another album and fight, fight, fight," she continued: "Now I'm a single mom and things are different. I want to be here for her, and I have to be here for her. The fight is back. That had been gone for a long time. I'm it. I'm all she's got."