Happy Kidney Birthday - 24 years

Something rather strange just happened. I don't usually "surf" the web, but tonight I did.

I receive a weekly email called Neat New Stuff from a fellow librarian by the name of Marylaine Block. She scans the web for interesting sites and shares them with anyone interested. She posted her weekly list of a dozen or so sites this evening and one of the sites was organdonor.gov, a U.S. Government website focused on organ donation and transplantation. I am interested in this site because I am a kidney transplant recipient. So I looked around and found out that if you need a kidney and are put on the waiting list you will wait an average of over 1100 days.

I was put on the kidney recipient list in December 1983, 6 months after graduating from high school. By then I was feeling run down and enervated. I was living with my parents still and I sat and read most days in the flower pattern rocking chair that I swivelled to face the front window to take in the low winter sun. I assumed that I would have to wait quite a while before I would get a call to come to the hospital. At that time the waiting period was considerably less than 1100 days. But in the late evening of January 31, 1984 I received the call that there was a kidney for me and that I should come to the hospital as soon as possible.

What was so strange about the web surfing I mentioned above? It was that I had totally forgotten about my kidney birthday, yet here I was surfing the web for links about transplantation. Celebrating my kidney birthday is a rather low-key affair, usually nothing more than a reminder of what happened and how lucky I was. Easily forgotten. But what I'm not factoring in is that without that transplant I wouldn't be alive. I received a cadaver kidney, meaning someone had died and their kidneys were donated so that someone else could live a longer and healthier life. What a wonderful
gift that is!

Something else I learned from the organdonor.gov website is that organ donation can be as easy as filling out a form online. In New York State it's that easy. To find out how to register as an organ donor in your state visit: http://www.organdonor.gov/donor/registry.shtm