Kidney Donation: True or False

It occurred to me once again the other day that if we ever hope to increase awareness and encourage living donation, we still need to clear up a few misconceptions and teach the basics. Did you know the answers to these true or false questions?

1—You have to be a blood relative to donate your kidney to someone.

2—You can’t lead a normal, healthy life with just one kidney.

3—Kidney donors can’t ever drink alcohol.

4—Living donors have to take medication for the rest of their lives.

5—Living donors need to see a nephrologist (kidney specialist) regularly.

Answers:

1. False. Though blood relatives have a higher chance of being a good tissue match, unrelated donors are a fast-growing group. And even if you are not a blood-type match, you can donate on behalf of someone in a paired donation–basically a swap.

2. False. Thousands of people are born with just one kidney and are perfectly healthy. When you lose a kidney, the other kidney takes on some of the function of the one that was removed. The result is sufficient to lead a normal life.

3. False. Alcohol is processed through the liver, not the kidneys. Living donors have no particular alcohol-related restrictions other than moderation and being hydrated.

4. False. Living donors who are otherwise healthy have no kidney-specific medications.

5. False. Healthy living donors have no need for specialized kidney care and are simply advised to see their primary care provider to monitor their kidney function and blood pressure annually.

Yup, all false. No doubt there are many more misconceptions about kidney donation. Check out the growing list of FAQs, and if you don’t see an answer to something you’ve heard, please let me know. It too may be a myth.

For related posts, resources, and information on my new book, The Insider’s Guide to Living Kidney Donation, be sure to explore the rest of my website.

Health Information Is Power!

Before my son was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in 2004, I knew as much as most people about the subject—which is to say, almost nothing. Not sure if I even knew you can live a normal life with one kidney. Before he developed kidney failure, and I started the evaluation process for donating my kidney to him, I knew almost nothing about living donation. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, I know more than most people about these things and have made it my mission to help people learn before a crisis hits—in the hope, ideally, of preventing more such crises.

So now I find myself in a similar situation concerning liver disease and liver donation. No, thankfully, it’s not my own family this time, and I’m not considering being a living donor again in my 70s, but as always, it’s because of someone I care about. You may have read here that my friend and co-author, Betsy, needs another kidney transplant after 15 years. That was bad enough. For a while though, a few months later, there was good news when she’d found a living donor and was scheduled to have the transplant in December. Unfortunately, the good news gradually became more tentative as her health began to deteriorate and the transplant was postponed.

And now the biggest shock of all came last week when she/we learned that she also needs a liver transplant. After being stunned and saddened, I began my new education about livers and liver donation. All I knew was that, since the majority of people on the deceased-donor waiting lists need a kidney, the wait for a liver is much shorter: about a year versus 3 to 5 years (often 5-10). As for living liver donation, I knew you can donate part of your liver because it grows back but that it’s a bigger deal than donating a kidney–it’s a more serious surgery, with a longer recovery.

However, by reaching out to the Facebook donation/transplant community, reading articles, and searching online, I’ve already learned some very encouraging information. Did you know that you can donate two-thirds of your liver and it regenerates so much that within a few months, both you and your recipient have a healthy-sized liver?

Photo by Vidal Balielo Jr. on Pexels.com

I also learned that the donation surgery is easier than it used to be and that some centers have started to use minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery as is done for kidney donors. That means a much smaller incision, far less pain and blood loss—and a quicker recovery. That should make it a little easier to think about asking people to consider donating.

That’s all good news, not just for Betsy and her friends and family, but for all patients and their families and friends. Betsy certainly has a lot to deal with and is facing many difficult decisions and waiting periods. But she’s an amazingly positive person and is learning all she can and asking questions so she’ll be as informed as possible. As we always say, information is power—never more so than in matters of health.

Wondering Who Gave a Kidney to Stevie Wonder?

You may have heard that Stevie Wonder had a kidney transplant recently from a living donor, and, fortunately, all is well. There’s been much speculation about the identity of his donor. If you too have been speculating, let’s test a few assumptions–and clarify a few things about living donation while we’re at it. What do we already know about the donor?

1-His donor needn’t be a family member—not even a distant relative. Anti-rejection meds are so advanced now that a good match is far less important, and more and more living donors are not blood relatives.

2-Stevie Wonder’s donor isn’t necessarily a man. I know many women who have donated to their husband, father, son (I donated to mine), friend–whatever. Though a very large man might have a kidney that’s too big for a small woman, and a small woman’s kidney might be too small for a very big man, for the most part, male-female donor pairs are not a problem.

3-The donor also needn’t be African American. It’s not at all uncommon for a white person to donate their kidney to a black person and vice versa.

4-His donor needn’t be young. I was 58 when I donated my kidney, and living donors over 50 are increasingly common—we now represent more than a third of living donors. Some transplant centers have a cutoff of about 70 for donors, but most decide on a case-by-case basis, depending on the kidney’s health and the donor’s overall health. I know of people who’ve donated in their mid-70s.

If you’ve read this far, you now know that we can’t assume much about Stevie Wonder’s donor. So, what can we assume? Just this: the individual is a very healthy, very caring adult.

I wish them both as positive an outcome as my son and I have had—and we’re 13 years post transplant. I really do hope they talk about it publicly to help clear up some more assumptions about living donation. Maybe doing so will encourage others to consider being living donors to meet the tremendous need and shorten the wait for a lifesaving organ. That’s ultimately what my co-author and I hope to do with our book in progress, “The Greatest Gift: The Insider’s Guide to Living Kidney Donation.”

A Cold But Successful Kidney Walk

This weekend my husband (Neil), son (Paul, my recipient), and I participated in our umpteenth National Kidney Foundation Triangle Kidney Walk [see my post on our long history of kidney walks], in Durham, NC. We were thrilled to learn that it set a record for donations: more than $97,000, with money still coming in. I think it broke another record, too–this may have been the coldest one (I know it’s the only time I’ve ever worn a winter coat over my Kidney Walk tee shirt).

Because of the damp chilly weather, the Walk organizers decided to shorten the route. What was supposed to be a 2.4-mile loop was reduced to just 1 mile total. True, my fingers were numb even before it was over, but we were still a bit disappointed.

It was long enough though to fall into conversation with a woman doing her first Walk. She’d driven all the way from the Pinehurst area because her mother had died recently from kidney failure, and she felt she had to do something. Like so many of us, she’d known very little about kidney disease before her mother started dialysis 4 years before. A few family members had planned to come along, she said with a little annoyance, but one by one they’d backed out. To her credit she came alone.

We talked about how little is known about kidney disease and how important it is to focus more attention on education in addition to research. We learned a startling statistic before the walk started: the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which is the main source of health-related research in this country, spends $568 per patient/year on cancer research. Kidney disease research accounts for…$29 per patient/year! I thought I’d heard it wrong and had to double-check before finalizing this post. And yet chronic kidney disease affects more than 30 million Americans. It’s yet another reminder of how important that new public awareness campaign is [see my previous post].

We saw lots of familiar smiling faces at the walk, many peering out from under wool hats. Friends from Donate Life NC/WELD (Women Encouraging Living Donation) were working a table this year. One of them, Dolores McGrath, a fellow NKF Kidney Advocacy Committee member, would be joining me for my first “official” visit to the state legislature this week. (More on that in my next post!)

That’s Dolores McGrath, center; and Deanna Kerrigan, Donate Life NC/WELD director, right.

Powerful Push to Promote Public Awareness of Kidney Disease

I’ve long been amazed and frustrated that most people know little about kidney disease and are unaware of the public health crisis: nearly 100,000 people in this country are waiting for a kidney from a deceased donor, and most will wait several years. For many, that’s too long, and thousands die every year because they didn’t receive a kidney in time.

That lack of information is widespread and includes educated, otherwise knowledgeable, well-informed people. Most of the 30 million-plus people in this country with chronic kidney disease don’t even know it yet, so if people paid more attention to their kidneys, and healthcare providers focused on early detection, kidney disease could be treated before it reached life-threatening kidney failure. Just think of the thousands—maybe millions—of lives that could be saved!

That’s why I was very excited to learn that the public awareness part of that amazing kidney health initiative just got some real teeth. The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is forming an important partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and American Society of Nephrologists (ASN) to promote the Public Awareness Initiative portion of what’s officially called Advancing American Kidney Health initiative.

Did you know that one-third of Americans are at risk for developing kidney disease, not only because of diabetes and high blood pressure, but also cardiovascular disease, obesity, and family history of kidney disease? For certain groups, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, the risks are especially high: African Americans are three times as likely as whites, and Hispanics nearly 1.5 times as likely as non-Hispanics, to develop end stage kidney failure.

Even for people who are not at increased risk, my family knows well that our kidney health should never be taken for granted. If you read my son’s post on this site on the anniversary of his transplant, you may recall that he developed his kidney disease from a lingering strep infection. He was young and otherwise healthy, but 5 years later he was on dialysis, and 2 years after that, I gave him my kidney.

The collaboration by HHS, NKF, and ASN will provide education about the risks of kidney disease and promote the early detection and management of kidney disease to improve patients’ results.

For more information on the partnership, the Initiative, and kidney disease in general, read the complete announcement here.

Living Donor Registry and At-Home Test for Donors

Thinking about becoming a living kidney donor but wonder where to start? Maybe you know someone who needs a kidney and don’t know if you’d be a match. Wondering if there’s a central way nationally to register your interest and be guided through the process? Surely there oughta be, but there really isn’t, although kidney registries perform some of that function (see Resources). That may be about to change.

Last week we heard about some exciting developments for both the nearly 100,000 kidney patients waiting for a transplant and people who want to start the process of becoming a living donor. Donate Life America and Fresenius Medical Care Foundation announced that they were teaming up to launch the first-ever national, universal registry of potential living kidney donors and to pilot a simple, at-home saliva-sample test for donors.

Did you know that little more than 20,000 kidney transplants happen in this country in a year (about two-thirds of them have a deceased donor)? That’s not much, and clearly, it’s not enough. There simply aren’t enough eligible deceased donors alone to fill the urgent need. Some patients languish on the waiting lists for 5 to 10 years. For many thousands of them, that’s dangerously long. As a result, each day about 16 people die in this country because they didn’t get a life-saving kidney in time. Every day.

Donate Life is better known for its important work in promoting deceased organ, eye, and tissue donation through the national organization and affiliated state programs. In recent years though, with the pressing need for transplants, it’s expanded its mission into living donation. In North Carolina, for example, I’m a proud member of my local Donate Life NC WELD (Women Encouraging Living Donation) branch and have written a few posts about it–see one example.

If the name Fresenius looks familiar, you probably know it as the huge private dialysis provider. But this is its separately operated nonprofit. The registry is scheduled to be up and running in spring 2020, and not many details have been released. The at-home tests, though, are supposed to be piloted in a few transplant centers between now and February 2020.

Periodically, there’s an outpouring of interest in kidney donation in response to an individual’s publicized need of a kidney. A family member walks around town wearing a sandwich-board or buys space on a billboard to spread their plea. Only some of the people who reach out get tested, and only one becomes the donor. More often than not, those other potential donors just vanish and with them the chance of saving another life. With the exception of some limited experiments, there has been no way to register these people and to capture and direct that interest.

To patients in kidney failure and donation advocates, that lack of direction is a particularly tragic waste of potential. This registry just might make all the difference.

Just How Unlikely Is It for a Donor to Need a Transplant?

I just read a stunning statistic that was extremely reassuring for living donors, so I just had to pass it on. You may already know that living donors have less than a 1% chance of someday developing kidney failure themselves. Did you know that in the “unlikely event” that a living kidney donor ever needs a transplant themselves, they are given priority on the national transplant waiting lists? That would mean they could receive a kidney from a deceased donor in a matter of weeks or months, not years—thus, probably avoiding dialysis. That’s certainly comforting.

But “unlikely event” takes on a whole new meaning when you see this statistic: Of the 60,000 people who donated between 1998 and 2007, only 11 were added to the transplant list! Do the math, that’s about 0.02%–two-hundredths of 1%. And if you were part of a kidney swap or donor chain through the National Kidney Registry, you would receive priority to receive a living donor kidney. I’d say those are damn good odds.

5 Truths about Becoming a Living Kidney Donor

I just discovered an embarrassing glitch (aka technological error) in this brief post, so I’ve corrected it and reposted.

There are still many myths about what’s involved in donating a kidney, and here are a few. I first included these in an article in 2017 and have already needed to update a couple of them because many aspects of the process have gotten easier. How many of the questions can you answer correctly?

True or False: The surgeon removes a rib to get to the donor’s kidney.

False: Thanks to minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery (the standard of care), I had two tiny slits and a three-inch bikini incision.

True or False: Donors must be young.

False: More than a third of living kidney donors are over 50. It’s the health of the kidney–plus the donor’s overall health–that counts. I was 58 when I donated mine.

True or False: Donors stay in the hospital for a few weeks.

False: A typical stay is now 1 or 2 days.

True or False: Donors need to miss work for 3 to 6 months.

False: I could have gone back to my sedentary job as an editor in 2 or 3 weeks. A laborer might need a couple of months.

True or False: There’s no turning back.

False: You can change your mind at any point. My transplant nurse coordinator, social worker, psychologist, nephrologist, and transplant surgeon all assured me that I could. My son would be told only that I had been eliminated.

This post is drawn (and updated) from an earlier, longer post I wrote for WELD’s blog. The original 2017 article appeared on the National Kidney Foundation website.

Donate Life Month Quiz: 5 True or False

Here are a few important “facts” about organ donation. Test yourself—and let me know how you did! (Not to worry–I’ll grade on a curve.)

1-Most of the 113,000+ people on the national waiting lists for an organ from a deceased donor are waiting for a heart.

False. More than 80% of them are waiting for a kidney.

2-In the United States, the wait for a kidney from a deceased donor is a matter of months.

False. In many areas of the country, it’s 5 to 10 years.

3-Every year a few hundred people die because they didn’t receive a lifesaving organ in time.

False. About 6,500 people on the lists die while waiting for a kidney each year.

4-A large percentage of people in the United States can be organ donors when they die.

False. Only about 3 in 1,000 people die in such a way that they can be organ donors: generally, in a hospital following a trauma such as a car accident. That’s just 0.3% (yes, I had to look it up).

5-Most living donors are men.

False. Nearly 2/3 of living donors are women.

So, if you’re not already a registered organ donor, you needn’t wait till you renew your driver’s license. You can do it online right now at registerme.org. (There you’ll also find more facts about donation.) And if you’d ever wondered why the wait for a deceased-donor organ is so long, and why donation advocates hope that more people will consider being live donors, now you know the bottom line. There simply aren’t enough organs available.

5 (Big) Benefits of Live Donation–for the Donor

In my post last week, I explained some of the enormous benefits of a live vs. deceased-donor kidney for the recipient, but did you know that there are real benefits to the donor, too?

For family members or couples, they are nothing short of dramatic:

1-To see a loved one who’s been pale, weak, and often listless for many months or years gradually become their old self again is pretty powerful. And a partner who wasn’t interested in intimacy during the period when he or she was on dialysis may now discover a new bond.

2- A spouse or parent whose ability to work was limited for a long period may soon resume a full-time schedule–or even launch a new career–to substantially improve the family’s finances.

3-Couples that have been uncomfortable for a long time about socializing—whether because of specific obstacles or simply due to the patient’s lack of energy or interest—will soon be able to enjoy evenings out with friends or family.

4- If the donor has been the caregiver, the reduced stress and no doubt improved sleep can have considerable benefits in mood, overall outlook, and even job satisfaction.

For family members or anyone who donates a kidney—even to a stranger–the benefits are universal:

5- The feeling of personal gratification is indescribable. Knowing that you’ve helped give someone—anyone—a chance at a healthy, productive life—is an extraordinary feeling. Donors in studies report a boost in self-esteem, and 9 out of 10 say they would do it again. Through donor-support groups I’m active in on Facebook, I’ve been struck by how life changing the experience has felt for nearly all of us, including the few who have later had complications or whose recipient didn’t fare well for as long as expected.

A fascinating journal article inspired this post. The researchers argue that for the above reasons and more, transplant centers considering a potential donor’s risk might do well to acknowledge the undeniable benefits for certain donors as well.

“Van Pilsum Rasmussen, S. E., M. Henderson, J. Kahn, and D. Segev. “Considering Tangible Benefit for Interdependent Donors: Extending a Risk–Benefit Framework in Donor Selection.” American Journal of Transplantation 17, no. 10 (Oct. 2017): 2567-2571.