My mother is diabetic and now she’s got some major kidney problems. She can only take dialysis for a short time, since it won’t help her for very long. She WILL need a transplant and is now on the ‘list.’
I offered to be a donor for her. She has accepted, and we go to see her kidney specialist the first part of next month to get things all lined out with the tests I need to have before they can decide if I am a viable donor for her. I’m not just doing it because ‘she’s my mom.’ I’m doing it because she is (aside from my husband) my best friend and I don’t want her to have to die waiting for a kidney from a deceased person. I love my mom dearly. I hope this all works out so I can be a donor for her. There is a chance that it won’t work out, but, we’ll see what the tests say.
I’ve read so much about this the past few days and I am learing all I can about it. I was wondering if any Dopers out there have donated a kidney to someone they love? If so, please let me know how things are going for you!
Yeah. I know. Mom is the only one that is diabetic in our immediate family. Her uncle died from it, and so did her grandmother. I figure that if I take care of myself, things should be ok. If not, well, it’s still worth the risk.
If/when you have a problem would you husband be willing to do the same thing (assuming he matches?). This may or may not have any relvence to your case.
Umm, JoeyP, chances are that my husband could not be a living donor for me, since he’s NOT a blood relative.
My daughter is willing to be a living donor for my mother, also, but she’s only 18 years old, and she’s probably too far removed from the bloodline for it to work. So, I’ll be taking the tests to see if I’m a viable donor.
I donated a kidney to my sister-in-law’s husband a little over three months ago (7 July '05).
The kidney removal was done at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and the proceedure was a relatively new one called a mini-nephrectomy which the kidney was removed from a 3-4 inch incision (and that was the only incision). They can also be done laproscopically (sp?) or the quite invasive cut-front-to-back with rib removal method.
Make sure you go for the least invasive method. You’ll be back on your feet much faster. Though, I did not say 100%, just back on your feet.
Anyway, my e-mail address is in my profile if you wish to contact me.
It is a great thing to do but is also NOT a pleasant experience by any means. I would not want to scare you out of doing it with horror stories but then you should also go into it with as much information as possible.
There is also websites devoted to organ donors. www.transweb.org
While being a blood relative increases your chances of being a suitable donor, it’s not at all necessary.
A good friend of mine needed a transplant earlier this year. No kidneys were available from his family, so a call went out to his friends.
First they match for blood type. If you don’t have a compatible blood type, then there is no need for further tests.
Then samples of the potential donors blood are tested against the recipient’s blood. We were lucky and found 6 people who were compatible. All non-relatives.
From here, the hospital told us to pick which person was the prefered donor. They didn’t really give us any guidelines, other then telling us that thinner donors were prefered. (I dont’ remember the Body Mass Index number that they gave us).
The person we picked then was put through a battery of additional tests to make sure they were in a good enough shape to donate.
The surgery took place Tuesday morning. They were all done in about 4 hrs. By that evening, the donor was calling people to let them know how things went. Thursday, the donor was sent home. Saturday, the recipient was home. Almost 4 months later, they are both doing well.
Talking to the recipient’s family, the procedures and medications for kidney transplants have improved remarkably in the last 20 years or so. The donor now has 3 or 4 (I don’t remember) small holes opened, and 1 larger one, where the kidney is removed. Much less tramatic then it used to be.
I donated a kidney to a friend of mine at the end of May. They did it laproscopically and it was much less of an ordeal than I expected. I have a 3-inch incision below my navel and 3 half-inch scars where they inserted instruments. I was in the hospital for two days, after which I was functioning well enough to go home. I had a sister there to cook for me and tend house for the first week or so, but right off the bat I was able to navigate the stairs without pain.
The surgery slowed me down for a couple months, but the biggest impact was just a reduced energy level. Now I can’t tell the difference – if I didn’t have the scars, I wouldn’t be able to tell anything had been done to me. I was on a low dosage of percocet for about 5 or 6 days total, and immediately following surgery I had an IV drip of pain meds that I could boost if I wanted to, but I didn’t really need to most of the time. The most annoying part is having your intestines shoved around during the surgery. For a few weeks afterward, things didn’t feel quite right when I ate, and I got full very quickly.
As far as the long-term risk to yourself goes, it’s minimal. There are no indications that living with just one kidney is any worse than living with two. The only real risk is that if you develop some sort of kidney troubles later, you don’t have the redundant one to fall back on. The doctors, of course, will go into great detail about what you can expect, both in the short and long term.
One thing to bear in mind, though, is that it’s a misconception that a non-family member can’t donate. The recipient and I have no connection beyond our friendship, and I was deemed a sufficient match. With a family donor, you can get a closer genetic match, but even without that there is a 90% long-term success rate for people who pass the level of match you can get for a non-relative. So your earlier comment about your husband isn’t necessarily true.
Something I would recommend that the doctors are not likely to mention: make sure you have a recliner available that is comfortable to sleep in. For at least the first couple days, it’s much more comfortable to sleep in that position than it is to lie flat. And believe them when they tell you that walking is the best possible thing for you. Don’t push it too hard, but I always felt much better after I walked.
What has been said about donors potentially being unrelated is absolutely true. As far as I recall, kidneys of the proper blood type are tissue-typed for 6 different factors between donor and recipient. A match of 0/6 could still be transplanted … but the worse the match, the stronger the anti-rejection drugs must be. Did I mention that anti-rejection drugs are hard on the kidneys?
Naturally, since the medication isn’t good for the kidneys, they try to find the best matches possible to keep the med doses down.
The other tests a donor is likely to undergo will be things like cardiovascular and respiratory studies; these help select a donor who is likely to withstand an hours-long surgery. (Kidney transplants run 2-3 hours, I believe.) They may also test for HIV, hepatitis, or other such blood-borne diseases, as there’s no sense in giving the recipient immune-repressing drugs and a disease at the same time.
My mother donated a kidney to me at age 52 and she was out of the hospital in 2-3 days.
Yes, I know you CAN get a kidney from a non-relative, but the rejection rate is much higher. That’s why they DO have that unending list of folks that need transplants and all. I’m just all messed up knowing that mom will die soon without getting this done, so I’m not really able to explain myself clearly. I’m shook up over the entire ordeal. I need to calm down and get past it, I believe. It does piss me off that the kidney specialist can’t get us in until the first part of next month, though. If someone was THAT ill, you’d think they’d get them in sooner than this. I know the man is busy and there are other patients that he’s got to care for. I’m just being a bit snippy about it all, because it concerns my mom, I guess.
I DO know that I WILL be her donor, if it is at all possible, since the chance of rejection is reduced so much, with it coming from a blood relative. If not from me, then my sister has offered to be tested, also. So, there’s hope yet!
I found out that I’ll have to take a mammogram before they’ll let me be her donor, to rule out cancer, plus all the bloodwork, scans, xrays, etc. So, that’s cool with me. I’ve been putting off having one anyway and this is as good a time as any!
The surgery would take place in Indianapolis, Indiana…probably at the IU Medical Center, which is a fantastic facility. No worries there. This type of surgery is very common nowadays.
I’ve had much worse surgery than this, and that part doesn’t bother me. It’s my mom that I’m concerned about. It’s good to hear experiences that others have had concerning this. It’s making me feel better, hearing this from people that KNOW about it.
Then I think you’ll find this reassuring: immediately after the surgery, my friend’s spirits were vastly better than they had been while his kidneys were in decline. He said that despite the pain, he already felt much better. The improvement was immediate and very noticable. Once he had recovered from the surgery, of course, he felt even better. The anti-rejection meds and his gout still slow him down a little, but all in all his quality of life has gone way up. None of that is surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less encouraging.
Here’s hoping everything goes smoothly for both your mom and you.
