Goalie who scored a kidney helps win NHL game!

In my last post I wrote about celebrities who’ve been given a shot at a fuller, healthier life because of a living kidney donor. If you thought they mostly led quiet restricted lives, along comes David Ayres, the emergency goalie who won the game for the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team against the Toronto Maple Leafs!

Ayres received a kidney from his mother (like my son did!) 15 years ago. Since then the 42-year-old kidney transplant recipient has been happy to be a practice goalie, Toronto arena operations manager, and sometime-Zamboni driver. He never dreamed he’d get his turn in an NHL game, an always-physical and sometimes brutal sport. But on February 22, when a string of injuries left the Canes without a goalie, he was called to the ice with 28:41 to go in the game. He stopped eight shots and helped earn the team a dramatic 6-3 victory in his NHL debut.

The Canes are selling No. 90 Ayres tee shirts, for which he will receive royalties. A portion of the proceeds will go to a kidney foundation in his honor. The Canes are working with him to determine which foundation. There were a lot of winners that night in Toronto. The donation and the increased awareness of kidney transplants means that there will be even more.

Celebrity Kidney Recipients: Please Share Your Stories!

They’re athletes, actors, and musicians of different ages, races, and ethnicities. So, what do the celebrities listed below have in common? They’re all healthier, and very likely happier, because a living kidney donor gave them a shot at a better quality of life. The best way to shorten someone’s wait for an organ–rich or poor, famous or not–is to find a living donor. Sometimes it’s a biological family member who steps up–sometimes it’s a future or former partner. And sometimes it’s a Good Samaritan, who chooses to donate to an unknown person in need.

Fortunately, some of these famous live-kidney transplant recipients have become spokespersons for National Kidney Foundation campaigns, and some, like former NBA star Alonzo Mourning, comic George Lopez, and former NFL star John Brockington have gone so far as to launch their own kidney disease awareness foundations. (Did you know that my dear WELD [Women Encouraging Living Donation] started as an offshoot of the John Brockington Foundation before joining forces with Donate Life?)

Other celebrities have individually turned to the media to share their personal transplant experiences. Singer Selena Gomez and her donor, actress Francia Raisa, gave several helpful major interviews in 2019 about Gomez’s transplant, shedding light on the donation process and the aftermath. And actress Sarah Hyland candidly shared details of her two kidney transplants, first from her father and most recently from her brother, and of her struggles with depression.

Even though chronic kidney disease is more common than breast cancer or prostate cancer, the general public knows very little about it. If more celebrities who’ve been touched by kidney disease and transplant would openly talk about their life-changing stories, it could encourage more people to have their kidneys checked, register as organ donors, and even consider being living donors. All those actions would go a long way toward reducing the years-long wait for a kidney and ultimately saving more lives. By the way, celebrity status and money offer no privileges on the national waiting lists for a deceased donor.

How many of these celebrities did you know had had kidney transplants (the year of their transplant is next to each name)?

Stevie Wonder 2019

Ed Kranepool 2019

Selena Gomez 2017

Tina Turner 2017

Sarah Hyland 2012 and 2017

Tracy Morgan 2010

George Lopez 2005

Alonzo Mourning 2003

John Brockington 2002

Sean Elliott 1999

I wish them all continued good health with their adopted kidney. My son has had more than 14 years with his (that is, mine).

Happy National Donors Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day AND National Donors Day! You don’t need to be a living donor like me to be able to someday save a life–or several, in fact. If you don’t have that little heart on your driver’s license and haven’t already registered as an organ donor, please don’t wait to renew your license: go to organdonor.gov, among other sites.

More than 113,000 people in the United States are waiting for a lifesaving organ (most of them for a kidney). Only about 3 in 1,000 people die in such a way that organ donation is possible–for example, in a hospital following a car accident–so the pool is very small. That’s why it’s critical that everyone register. But those that can be organ donors can donate up to eight organs: two kidneys, two lungs, a pancreas, a liver, a heart, and intestines. Plus eyes and tissue–even hands and face.

Registering as a donor is important, but sharing your wishes with your family is just as important. When in doubt, at a very difficult time, a family in grief may choose not to donate the person’s organs. Many grieving families take lasting comfort in knowing that their loved one’s organs will help save someone’s life and bring relief and joy to another family. Most families will want to honor your wishes, if they just know what they are.

Donors, Your New-Normal Numbers Don’t = Kidney Disease!

I always tell potential kidney donors to keep an open mind but to do their homework and be as well informed about living donation as they can be. Turns out that that advice even applies years later.

Through social media donor support groups, I recently was stunned and outraged to learn that some donors have been told that they have stage 3 chronic kidney disease. One donor said she cried all night. Before you conclude that their “disease” is a result of kidney donation, I hasten to add that these were people with normal kidney function. In other words, as researchers have demonstrated, those living donors DO NOT HAVE CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE! Their slightly low readings are perfectly normal for them.

Apparently, their primary care providers—and, unbelievably, sometimes even nephrologists—were referring to the eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate) scale based on people with two kidneys and/or real kidney disease. Donors lose 25 to 35% of their pre-donation kidney function, but that’s still sufficient to lead a healthy normal life. It’s meaningless and patently wrong to look at the numbers in a vacuum and say that these people have chronic kidney disease.

As we get older, no matter how many kidneys we have, our kidney function declines. It’s especially common for people over 70, like me, to have a slightly low eGFR. At my last check-up, though, 13 years after donating my kidney to my son, my eGFR was 69 (normal is over 60).

So, if you are a kidney donor, don’t be alarmed at news of a slightly high eGFR. Ask questions (how long has it been in that range? what’s your creatinine?), and always remind your provider that you have one kidney. You may well be relieved to know that your new normal is just fine!