Another donation option!

I was chatting with my transplant coordinator, you know, as you do, and I asked her about how “sensitized” I am – which is what they call my antibody resistance. I was asking her because last week I heard some more bad news – another donor, someone who was able to donate in May, was no longer a match. Bummer, right? Bummer.

Julie (my transplant coordinator) told me that my CPRA number is 80, which means that I will respond to about 80% of possible donors. That’s not great. My number in January was 23, which is a much more reasonable number. According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, at 80, I “might have to wait a very long time until a compatible donor becomes available.” It’s high enough that I get 4 extra points on the kidney allocation algorithm. Yikes.

But there is another way! And it’s not the desensitization procedure covered in the NYT last week (though that seems like it could be an option in the future). The Paired Donation program!  

Being optimistic, and having so many wonderful people volunteering to get checked out, I’ve not given much thought to the paired program, but it’s starting to look like my best (only) option. The good news for all of you potential heroes out there with the wrong blood type, this is your chance! You don’t need to be compatible with me in any way, because your kidney goes to another cool person out there waiting to restart their lives, and their cool friend’s kidney goes to me! And I can enter the paired donation program with lots of people – the more people the better chance of making a match. What’s so cool is you would be donating for two people - sometimes more than two!

So I’m putting another big ask out there – would you be willing to put yourself on the paired donation program? Call Susanna and tell her! 612-863-8886! You’ll have the benefit of a full physical work-up for free! And when you tell people what you’re up to they’ll be totally impressed. And when you’re having a bad day you can think to yourself, at least I’m helping Kevin get a kidney!

Yeah, I know I’m laying it on pretty thick, not very Minnesotan of me. But I confess I’m starting to feel a little impatient with this whole thing, and thought it would be better just to do the big ask. So give it a shot! Have a conversation with someone about it. It’s been a dream of mine that someone might be inspired by this story and donate a kidney to a stranger – I’m not the only cool young person waiting for a transplant. With paired donation, we get both!

And with all things health care, take charge of your testing process – ask to double up appointments. Call Susanna, don’t wait for her to call you. That number again? 612-863-8886. Thanks for reading!