April is National Donate Life Month, promoting organ donation. I know we have a lot of themed months, days and weeks as a nation, but this April week also marks the six-month anniversary of the day I donated my left kidney, so I’m feeling inclined to celebrate it.
I’ve always been a fast healer. The only side effects I’m still experiencing from the surgery are occasional twinges at the surgical site when I exercise or lift heavy objects and, uh, increased frequency of urination, which might be due to my increased fluid intake. (The doctors told me to drink a lot of water to keep my remaining kidney healthy, and by God, I listen to my doctors.)
I recently got my six-month follow-up lab work back, and everything looks good. My kidney function is 72% of what it was prior to the donation, which I think is pretty good, considering I lost 50% of my kidneys. Renal Solo – which is what I’ve been calling my remaining right kidney – is, like his owner perhaps, a bit of an overachiever. I called my left kidney Ernesto. I don’t know where Ernesto is, but I know he’s somewhere in the state of Maine, and I’ve heard he’s doing a good job.
People say very nice things about you when they find out you donated a kidney to a stranger. I’ve been called, and I’m not kidding here, an “angel,” a “saint,” a “hero” and “like, such an amazing person.” And while I’m only human and appreciate when people say nice things about me, those phrases bother me for two reasons.
The first reason is that I’m not a saint. I’ve done many bad things in my life. I can be just as bone-headed, greedy and self-centered as the next girl. I don’t describe myself as “a good person” because goodness is relative and if I just decided I was “a good person,” I worry that I would stagnate. What I try to do is to make the right decision when choices present themselves to me. I don’t always succeed. Sometimes I do. When the choice to donate a kidney came to me, I think I made the right choice.
The second and more important reason I don’t like being put on a pedestal is because if a person thinks being an anonymous donor is something that only amazing, special, rare people do, fewer people will do it. I think what happens is that most people can’t imagine themselves donating a kidney to a stranger, and so they assume someone who does it is different in some fundamental way.
When I walked into the Maine Transplant Program offices for my introductory appointment, I didn’t think I was going to donate my kidney to a stranger, either! I had planned on getting tested for a friend of the family who needed one, but if we weren’t a match, I was going to keep my kidney to myself. But then I learned more about the process, the potential side effects and the safety of the surgery. I decided that for me, the pros of donating outweighed the cons.
I always feel a little weird talking publicly about it, because I’m scared people will think I’m being a gloryhound. I didn’t become a living kidney donor for praise. I did it for exactly one reason: I know what it feels like to watch someone you love get sicker and sicker while you are completely powerless to stop it, and I figured if I could stop that for one family, I should. (And, OK, I was having a little tiny emotional crisis about turning 30 and I felt I needed to accomplish something.)
But I have this neat little platform in the paper, so if it’s helpful to demystify kidney donation, I’d like to help. And I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there waiting, hoping, and praying that some random do-gooder like myself will decide to get rid of a kidney.
My mom always said that in order to be a writer, you just need to write. The same thing applies to being an organ donor.
Here are some statistics about organ donation: 17 people die in America every day waiting for an organ transplant. Only three out of every 1,000 people die in such a way that their organs can be donated. Some organs can be donated while still living (kidney, liver, bone marrow if you count that as an organ). Talk to your next of kin, your power of attorney, your friends, and generally anyone who might make those decisions when and if the time comes.
If you’re worried you might be too old to do it, you probably aren’t. There’s no age limit to registering as an organ donor, and age won’t automatically rule you out, including in cases of living donation – the Maine Transplant Program has had a living kidney donor in their 80s.
You can register at the BMV (in case going to the BMV wasn’t exciting enough already) or at registerme.org. Among the many facts I was told during my meetings with the Maine Transplant Program was that Maine has a very high percentage of organ donors, both living and deceased, relative to our small population. I think there are many reasons for this, but an underrated one is our frugal Yankee generosity – the sort that can be boiled down in the phrase: “Well, if I can’t use it, you might as well.”
Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial
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