June 2010 - my kidney donation month

I called the transplant coordinator this morning to learn they are keeping the original 3 donor/recipient pairs and my surgery will be in late June! I won't have a specific date until May though as all the travel and other coordination needs to be worked out. I am excited - happy that I am not "losing" my recipient... and particularly pleased that the other recipient who has had issues being able to move forward with a transplant is still in my group. :)



Medical Minutes in Urology from Dramatic Health
(1-2 minute-long YouTube videos)

Kidney Donor Program: What Do You Know?
Kidney Donation: Medical Advances
Kidney Donation: Living With One Kidney
Kidney Donation: Impact on Lifestyle
Living Kidney Donation vs. Non-Living

3rd delay :(

I was thinking today that I should call for an update... then who should call me but my transplant coordinator, Michael Garrels, at around 4:30 p.m. today.

There is a glitch such that there is an issue with one of the recipient's in my group. My recipient is OK and we can continue as planned with just one other donor/recipient pair potentially within the same time frame. Or, in order to complete the original donor-recipient chain, we could wait until the recipient is 'better' then possibly have the surgeries done in June. That is quite a delay from March...

I don't feel I can make any type of decision regarding this. I don't feel it's up to me to decide who gets a kidney now, or who has to wait for one. I explained this to Michael who said that that made it easier to approach the other donor-recipient pair (apparently I was the first person in the 3-pair group he called, I guess because I'm the anonymous donor).

There are 3 options moving forward:
1. Don't wait - 2 transplants can take place probably in March

2. Wait - 3 transplants can take place probably in June

3. Get a different potential recipient match and possibly my transplant surgery will get done 'sooner' or just as soon


The results of each of these options is:
For #1, I could get a surgery date by the end of the week.

For #2, I won't get a date (in June) for probably another month.

For #3, it's hard to say when this will take place as I will have a new recipient; as long as my recipient is an actual match, it should be able to get scheduled fairly shortly with the other donor-recipient pairs after the new cross-match run.

I shared this news with Erika (my HR friend).

The transplant coordinator felt concern for me that I have to wait so long for this to take place but when I have this surgery is of no consequence to me. I am not going to say, "Sorry, person-needing-a-kidney; I have vacation plans, you must wait! It's the recipients who need our living kidneys sooner than later.

I just told Michael that whatever works out best for the most people is how I look at it so he said he'd get back to me within the week.