“To save one life, it’s as if you saved the world.”
(Content warning ⚠️: There’s a picture of a human kidney in this post at the end lol)
January 16th.
My favorite day of the year! The one day a year where it’s still appropriate for me to brag years later 😆 To everyone else, it’s old news now, but, to me, it never gets old lol
Each day leading up to 1/16, I can’t wait. It’s like having two birthdays, except even better. I even buy myself a cake and gift to celebrate the best thing I ever did.
On 1/16/2024, I donated one of my kidneys to a stranger.
It was my calling and lifelong dream.
It was a gift given out of love for my fellow human & sentient being without care about what person were to receive it. The less suffering in the world, the better.
I knew the potential benefits to a recipient outweigh the rare potential short-term & long-term risks to myself. And even if I were to experience one, at least it’s because I tried to help someone. I could never regret it (Unless I find out he’s a Cowboys fan 😆 JK, I always have to throw that joke in somewhere, I even wrote it in my thank you letter to my transplant team lol)
My decision was inspired by a true story I read many years before, about a man who donated his kidney to an anonymous stranger. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever read, to give a literal piece of himself to save another.
I instantly knew I would do the same one day. Almost two decades later, I did! If I have more than enough of something for me, it makes complete sense to give some to someone who needs it.
Two men were saved through my one kidney donation. I volunteered to give my kidney to whoever needed it and was a match for me. It was an anonymous donation that was given to “the next person on the wait list.”
I share a set of kidneys with a 50 something year old man in Minnesota. I love to joke that I’m in two places at once and can pee for two 😆
Because I donated through the National Kidney Registry, I was given a kidney voucher to give to anyone in the country I wanted. I chose someone who wasn’t close enough to the top of the deceased wait list but was in urgent need. I did not know anyone who needed a new kidney and so gave it to another stranger I heard needed one.
He was brought into the system to receive an anonymous living donor kidney because I gave him the voucher. He got the kidney of a living person who was donating for someone who isn’t a match for that person.
My kidney voucher recipient, Greg, received his new kidney just over a year after my non-directed donation!
Coincidentally, we live only fifteen minutes apart and are a match!
So, I was going to donate to him directly, before an anonymous recipient was chosen for me. But, he had some more work before being cleared for transplant, so I moved forward with non-directed donation.
We are now good in-person friends!
We have similar views and values and some similar interests and sense of humor. I wasn’t planning on becoming friends with either of my recipients. Just planned on helping someone and going on my way with no strings attached. But we have become good friends and turned out to have much in common!
I have no contact with the person who has the kidney I gave. Maybe one day!
I think of both of my recipients as my kidney brothers. 💙
It was and still is the most incredible thing I ever did. I had no idea the significant change it would inspire in me. A change that has become even more prominent as the years go by.
My intention was only to help someone, but in the process, it also changed me for the better.
No one else can see it on the outside, but on the inside, I am forever changed. It has become so much an ingrained & essential part of my identity that it’s like I wouldn’t even be the me I am now without this experience. Sometimes, it’s like nothing else even matters when I think of it.
It serves as a kind of buffer against the stresses and disappointments and tragedies of life. Whenever I feel something dragging me down, I remember this, and it pulls me right back up. It brings me comfort in situations where I would be inconsolable. When my depression flares up with feelings of worthlessness & insecurity, I remember my own life literally, physically, saved someone else’s, and am reminded of how powerful & valuable each life is, and I push through, knowing I can do even more good.
When I look around at all the tragedy & destruction in the world, all the hatred and wrongs and evil, I am reminded that I did the absolute best I could to counter that, by loving my fellow humans in the ultimate way there is to love: Showing them that their own life matters enough for me to risk my own to save theirs, no matter who they are.
I’m like a colorful 3d version of what used to be a grey stick figure. It made me better in a general way. Even when I’m not consciously thinking about it, I can feel it.
It’s not that I was unhappy before or anything like that, it’s just the experience added so much depth to me in a way that’s unimaginable & indescribable. But I tried my best to put it into words.
I wrote a very long (you know me with the paragraphs long essays 😆) thank you letter to my transplant team at Penn Hospital before being released as a patient recently (we stay a patient for two years after our donation surgery). They loved it.
I would like to share part of that letter here:
I used to think of living kidney donation in a limited way, that it helps someone live, and their friends and family get to still have them around. And that was motivation enough for me to regift one of mine.
But, after this experience, I began to realize it’s so much more expansive than that. Countless things are going to happen when a person’s life is saved or changed that would never happen if they weren’t saved or changed for the better. It has an unfathomable and boundless ripple effect.
That person will go on to do things that will contribute to an infinite amount of other things. They’ll do work, engage in acts of kindness, have many encounters with various people, develop relationships, maybe have kids, and those kids will do an infinite number of things, on & on. When one person is saved, their life will have a limitless impact on the world, there’s no telling how many more will be helped, touched, or saved in various ways because that one person’s life was spared.
Even way into the very distant future, the impact of our choice to donate our kidney could still be existing even if it doesn’t involve the recipient or donor anymore. This isn’t just true for organ donation but any choice we make. Any choice, good or bad, any act of kindness, can have a lasting effect we can’t foresee and may never know.
This is true for every single one of us. We all impact everything around us in ways we may never know. Each impact we have will go on to create more effects. On & on & on.
The decision we make to give life doesn’t only help our organ recipient and voucher recipient, if we have one, but every single life they go on to touch.
We have no idea how powerful our own life is, no matter who we are or what we do. Every little thing we do touches someone or something for better or for worse.
If the thread that is us was missing, the uni-verse would not be the same. Part of it would unravel. We’re all connected in an infinite amount of intricate ways we’ll never fully understand. We’re all a thread in the tapestry of life, holding each other together.
After giving my kidney to save a stranger’s life, I understand this now in a deep way I never did before. It’s so enlightening.
I love being part of the whole organ donation family and feel a sense of kinship & belonging with all the other donors, donor families, recipients, and their families.
My body “lost” a kidney, but I received so much more in return.
My kidney donation has given me this whole family, a new friend, an expanded life perspective, and most of all, the gift of seeing someone’s whole life change, dramatically, for the best.
Even though it wasn’t my intention or expectation, my experience with kidney donation truly has given me just as much as it has given those who received the gift of life out of it.
💚
That’s an “excerpt” out of my thank you letter to my healthcare team.
I dropped off a copy of it in person along with gifts, and gave six of the team members a copy, personally, the ones I worked with most closely. They were so thankful and said they were blown away!
My surgeon called me and asked for my permission to share it in a mass e-mail within the Penn network lol Of course, I said yes!
It took MANY people to come together to save the two who were saved by my kidney donation, not just me. It took their friends & family & others advocating for them and helping with resources, and all the healthcare workers involved. Both of them received a kidney not only because of me but because someone else donated a kidney also.
The man who shares my set of kidneys with me received mine because someone donated theirs for him to get mine. If it wasn’t for Greg’s family & friends sharing his need for a new kidney, that information would have never reached me.
That’s the beautiful thing about organ donation & kidney chains, it’s so life-affirming and shows just how valuable one life is, that countless people go to great lengths to save that life.
I get all the credit (lol), but, truly, we ALL played an equally crucial role. If just one of us was missing, things would be significantly different. It’s possible someone may not even be here today.
It’s a beautiful thing to be a small part of.
The scars have faded. But the joy and sense of relevance never fade no matter how much time goes by. It’s not on my mind as much as in the beginning, but it’s always with me, and when thoughts of it or reminders pop up, it’s like an instant dopamine surge. Like being in love & walking on air.
I truly, inadvertently, gave the absolute best gift to myself when I gave the gift of life to someone else.
At the end of this life, whenever it may be, this one decision alone makes my whole life a success.
I would make the same decision again & again.
I also thank my transplant team at Penn for trusting me to donate my kidney! I take the best care of my remaining kidney and am overly cautious with it. I don’t ingest anything that can hurt it without checking first and make sure to water it regularly!
I am just as healthy with one kidney as with two.
I share my story for three reasons, because it makes me happy, because it uplifts others to read/hear (who doesn’t like a good Hallmark-like story 😆), and because it brings visibility to organ donation and may hopefully inspire even just one person to become a living donor and/or register as a potential deceased donor.
There are a couple of people alive today because I read that story many years ago. If I just heard we can donate our kidney to a stranger, I may not have, I’m not sure. But reading a true story about someone, personally, who did, it made me see something in myself like that person and motivated me even years later.
You never know who you or your life may be inspiring!
I see my experience with the perspective of this amazing thing I got to experience more than look at this amazing thing I did for someone else. It’s better than I ever imagined it would be.
And two years later, it makes me even happier than when I first donated my kidney because it took a while to process and finally fully sink in, this profound & rare thing I did, because I have since become an organ donor ambassador with the Gift of Life Program in Philadelphia, bringing awareness to organ donation, and get to work with and connect with others who share my passion, and because now my kidney voucher recipient got his new kidney, and because we are now friends, which we weren’t really in the beginning.
We attend organ donation events together, living donor celebrations, do 3k walks for organ donation/kidney disease awareness…It just gets better & better.
Cheers to my kidney twin in Minnesota, and Happy Kidneyversary!! 🥂🎉🎊
Many, many more for the both of us 💚
Also, will celebrate my other kidney brother’s Kidneyversary coming up in early February!!
“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”
💙🫘💚
Xoxo Kim
