Kidney Mama

There are about 80,000 people waiting for a kidney, and I wouldn’t presume to feature each of their stories, but Melissa Foster’s quest touches on something I think everyone in need of a kidney should do: Work everything you’ve got in this situation, girl.

Melissa started a Facebook group called “Mel Needs a Kidney” to try to find a donor. If you’re here because you saw Melissa’s page and have questions about what it’s like to donate a kidney, hop around kidneymama.com a little and drop me a line.

Also of note and in the news is Matt Massie’s search for a Type O kidney through OperationKidney.com. I really like that Matt’s loved ones are open to a paired donation (swap) scenario. Ups the chances and helps even more people. Good luck, Matt!

If you get tested to be a living kidney donor to someone you care about, and you don’t match that person, get your happy bottoms onto a paired donation registry somewhere. In paired donations, also called domino donations or kidney swaps, you donate to a stranger, and a stranger saves your friend’s life by being a living kidney donor to him or her. Need I say more?

Kidney transplant swaps haven’t been around that long, but Johns Hopkins Hospital has recently completed it 100th kidney transplant involving a swap. Living kidney donors are the answer, and swaps are making it all happen.

Robert A. Montgomery, MD, PhD, professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of Hopkins’ Comprehensive Transplant Center, called the 100th kidney swap at Hopkins “a huge milestone” for the technique.

“The revolution that we’ve started in this way of getting transplants has spread throughout the country,” he said. “We’re very proud of that.”

Of the living kidney donors involved in the swaps, Montgomery says:

“They can sort of pay it forward; do something good not just for their loved one. They give a kidney to someone else and their loved one receives the gift of life in return. It is spectacular.”

Indeed. Thanks, Johns Hopkins, for sorting through the supposed ethical dilemmas around paired kidney donations and pioneering this life-saving system.

Could regulated payments be a way to increase the number of living kidney donors, without introducing coercion, exploitation and other human nastiness into the donation process? No one is asking me, but I think with proper screening, yes.

According to an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, it’s hard to say. The authors interviewed several hundred people about whether they’d donate a kidney if compensated, and in the end, they felt that that real-world tests were needed to see what would really happen.

It was a given that it would reduce death and suffering. Seems like time to give compensation for kidney donation a try.

Oh, outstanding news! California is establishing the California Living Donor Registry.

Registration will include opportunities for paired donations (I donate to your friend; you donate to mine.), non-directed donation to a stranger and directed donation to a particular person.

“Organ donation is one of the kindest, most generous and powerful actions that each and every one of us can take. With thousands of people in California and throughout the nation currently waiting for a transplant, this legislation represents a new and important resource to increase donor rates,” [Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger said via a news release. “I am excited to partner with the legislature to implement this life-saving legislation and make California a leader in organ donations.”

This almost makes up for Prop. 8. OK, not really.

We know that living kidney donors live longer than the average person, but they’re also far healthier than the average person. A new study published in the AMA Journal examines health and longevity for more than 80,000 living kidney donors, comparing them to equally healthy people.

Surgery is always a risk, of course, and the study found that once donors get past the initial 90 days after the procedure, they’re golden. Living with one kidney, as we’ve thought, is no big deal. As with any surgery (who knew?), living kidney donation is more of a risk for men, people of African descent and people with high blood pressure. But overall …

“Donating a kidney is safe,” said leading author Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

“Live donors start healthy and it’s the highest priority of the surgeon and the entire transplant community to make sure they stay healthy. This study says we have succeeded. While there are never any guarantees with surgery, donating a kidney is safer than undergoing almost any other operation.”

Bottom line, once the surgery is past, living kidney donors live as long as equally healthy people who have two kidneys.

“Whatever happens when people donate kidneys, on average, it doesn’t affect the rest of their lives — and that has never been shown before in a study of this size and scope,” said Segev.

This isn’t a living donor story, but a big shout-out goes to Vaughan Crequer, who towed an ambulance with a would-be kidney transplant recipient through a blizzard to the hospital.

Ooops. The kidney was still stuck somewhere in the snow. So back he went and towed in the vehicle that contained the organs, too. Way to go, sir.