By:Marina Gallagher
For many living donors, donation is one of the most amazing experiences in their lives, and yet people remain afraid of becoming a donor, before or even after death.
Is it the lack of facts that drive this fear? Misinformation?
The first successful kidney transplant took place in America in 1954, the donor lived to be 87.
Studies show that living kidney donors tend to live longer than non-donors.
Kidneys transplanted from an adult donor into an infant or small child has the greatest chance of success of any organ transplant in any age group, and yet people believe that children can not accept adult kidney (which it totally untrue).
There are currently 97,941 in the US waiting for a kidney, of those 860 are children.
Ray is a hero, a life saver. He didn’t let fear or misinformation stop him. He learned the facts and made the choice to save a life.
This is a part of Ray’s story: ” One of the top five happiest days of my life was this past Tuesday, the day of my surgery. It rates right after the day of my marriage and the days my three children were born. My dream of sharing my spare kidney was fulfilled, and I learned that the recipient was doing well with it.
Furthermore, through the National Kidney Registry, the recipient had a donor willing to “pay it forward,” and this began a kidney chain that would result in three others getting a new kidney that week.”
To read more on Ray’s story visit Ray’s blog
Wishing you all good things,
Heaven knows we need them here. ~Author Unknown
