Just ONE Good Kidney

He has two bad kidneys.  I have two good kidneys.  So I decided to give him one of mine.

It wasn't as momentous a decision for me as one might think.  Being an organ or tissue donor has always been on the back of my mind.  I jokingly tell my friends that I've read WAYYYY too many issues of Readers' Digest, so I've known anecdotally that, if we're healthy, we can live with one kidney, less than 100% of our liver, etc.


Plus, I've always told everyone in my inner circle that, when I die, y'all are to harvest whatever serviceable organs and tissues there are in my body, hand them out to save sick people and promote research, then please, PLEASE burn my body.  Do NOT put my body in a casket and have people gawking at me at my funeral as my body lies there stiff and frozen.  Especially if that body is still overweight.


But I digress.  Back to the kidney story.


So now I'm officially part of the Live Donor program.  I've gone through a whole bunch of testing.  Lots of needles have gone into my veins.  So much blood has been drawn from me that I've stopped keeping track (they once drew 53.6 milliletres at one time, but who's counting?)  They've checked all my body fluids and they've flooded my body with iodine.  They've imaged my heart, chest and belly.  They've monitored how my body processes glucose.  These want to make really really, like, REALLY sure that that I'm healthy, that BOTH my kidneys are healthy, that I'm compatible with the patient, and that, up to the very LAST minute, his body will have a strong chance of accepting my kidney.  


Incredibly, there's more testing to come, plus repeated consent from me, before they actually remove one kidney from my body and put it into his.


Why am I doing this?


Because both his kidneys are bad.  Because if he doesn't have a live donor, he goes on a waiting list for a kidney.  As of April 1, 2011, there are 88,161 people waiting for a kidney.  People with his blood type may be on the waiting list for about 1,852 days.  That's a little over 5 years.  In the meantime, his kidney function would decline to the point where he would need dialysis.  Which means being hooked up to a machine that would do for his body what his kidneys can't do - several hours each day, 3 days each week, every week, until he gets that magic call that there's a kidney available for him.


Or until he dies waiting.


According to the National Kidney Foundation, about 18 people die EVERY DAY in the USA, waiting for an organ donation.


My kidney could save his life.


90.1 percent.  That's the 5-year survival rate in the USA of patients who receive LIVING kidneys from LIVE donors.  As opposed to the 81.8 percent who survive the wait and receive a kidney from a deceased donor.


He has two bad kidneys.  I have two good ones.  He can have one of mine.