Happy, Happy Birthday, Lefty!! 🫘💚💙 And many, many more!! 🥳🎊🎉🍻 🎂
I lit the candle for my dogs because they get special treats for every single special occasion and holiday. As soon as they see a cake with a candle lit, they go wild, yelling for their special treat. They know the words “cake” and “birthday.” So, this was a “birthday” for them, too. Lol
Xoxo Kim
“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
(Those things on my legs are not bruises and nothing contagious lol It looked much worse but is healing now. It’s an allergic reaction. It affects various parts of my body, my legs get hit the hardest. It’s literally impossible to avoid my trigger. Thankfully, it never affects my breathing, even though it can)
This was my FB post earlier, just sharing here!
Yesterday was a special day! It was the last day of my living kidney donation journey at Penn Transplant Institute!!
We stay a patient at the transplant center we donate at throughout our evaluation to become a living organ donor and then two years after the donation surgery, if we get accepted. Then, they let us go, and we’re on our own.
The first two years of medical test results after donation surgery is used for living kidney donation research. Our transplant team tracks our results to use for statistics & the future of living donation. It’s a requirement we have to agree to, to get accepted. We don’t pay for our medical testing the first two years or throughout our evaluation. The recipient’s health insurance does.
I was a patient there for almost three years 💚
My journey began in March 2023 when, at the spur of the moment, I filled out an application on a train one night after work, to give my kidney to anyone who needed it, and ended in January 2026, with a perfectly functioning solitary kidney, and two lives saved. 💙
I get this heartwarming feeling in my chest just writing this.
I loved every second of it and am going to miss it! It was nothing but happy & positive. It’s always uplifting to interact with the Penn staff, whether on a video call, through the patient portal, phone calls, or in person. I still remember so many of my interactions there and where I was when I got phone calls & messages.
Yesterday morning, I had my last appointment there.
It felt like a kind of graduation day. Lol Some (medical) tests and surveys for the last years, and now I’m done!
It feels like something being complete or accomplished. There was something very sentimental about my last day there. It made me think back to the beginning, the thrill of anticipation and new beginnings, always having this big thing to look forward to. Now, it’s already three years later!
I decided I should do something to celebrate 🥳 So, I bought myself a pretty and very inexpensive necklace at a boutique lol I chose a heart to represent my act of love. I’m not wearing it in this picture because I want to paint it with clear nail polish to preserve it as long as possible lol This necklace is one my recipient bought me (it doesn’t have to be painted lol)
I never had the perfect grades in school to be a student at UPenn. It’s one of those elite universities.
But I did have the perfect kidney to be a patient at the living donor center at UPenn hospital!
Just like the university, it’s very difficult to get accepted into Penn as a living donor, they’re very selective. They must have really wanted that kidney lol 😆
I got my two year kidney function test results! And then, we talked about my results at my appointment yesterday and how to keep my remaining kidney safe throughout life.
Once a year, I have to get medical tests to see how my remaining kidney is holding up after losing its counterpart. I also have a glucose test each year. And I have to have my blood pressure checked every six months or less.
Sometimes, after kidney donation, the remaining kidney fails, and the donor needs a transplant (This is VERY rare). It doesn’t always happen right away if it’s going to. It can happen at any point after donation surgery. It usually happens within the first ten years when it does happen. There’s never a point where we’re “out of the woods,” though.
We all know this before donating. They make it very clear. During the psych evaluation, they ask us how we would feel if we ever need a kidney transplant after donating ours.
Can’t say I would quite like it, but it was worth the risk. I would get to say it’s because I helped someone. So many are sick for no good reason. I would never regret it.
Someone else already needed a transplant NOW. I think of the fact that “maybe” I could need a kidney transplant later, as a privilege or “luxury” that someone else did not have. For someone else, there was no maybe.
So, we’re recommended to get lifelong tests once a year after leaving our transplant center.
We can also become diabetic after donation. That’s the number one reason for kidney failure in the U.S. So we should have a glucose test at least once a year.
Anything that isn’t good for two kidneys is especially not good for only one. When there’s two kidneys, they each take a hit of whatever is a.ttacking them, so it’s split evenly. With only one, it takes it all on its own. This is why I’m generally keeping my sodium, protein, and added sugar low/in moderation.
Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels!
I have to avoid NSAIDS & herbal/vitamin supplements. It’s one of the very few lifelong restrictions.
Donating a kidney also puts us at an elevated risk for elevated blood pressure that can require medication to keep under control. And seriously elevated blood pressure can damage the kidneys. That can also develop at any point, even years after donation.
It’s not extremely uncommon to develop blood pressure problems after donation because the kidneys regulate blood pressure. Having one removed can result in needing medication to keep it under control.
So we need our blood pressure checked every six or less months.
If it does happen, it’s usually easy to manage. My diet & lifestyle are already conducive to having healthy blood pressure, and I have no family history of any problems. So, that lowers my risk, and if it does happen, medication would control it without me having to do much else.
Everyone can actually benefit by annual kidney & glucose checks and frequent blood pressure checks. Even with two healthy kidneys. It can happen to anyone. And many people have some elevated risk factors. There are often no symptoms at first. If we get regular checks, they can catch it before it’s too advanced.
Righty is holding its own!!
Two years later, and it still got it!
My solitary kidney is functioning perfectly and as expected! It’s kicking a.ss all on its own lol No concerns at all.
My glucose, on point. Not diabetic or prediabetic.
Everything else was checked, including my sodium, potassium, calcium….it’s all perfect. All within normal range.
My most recent blood pressure was 104/72. Perfect.
My body weight is perfect.
There was nothing in my test results even slightly off.
At my visit yesterday, we went over my general diet, lifestyle, any medications I take (none),…literal perfection. (with the exception of my dental issues lol)
They don’t want anything at all to change and want everything to remain stable. “If perfect’s what you’re searching for, then, just stay the same.” 😆 lol jk
Going into middle age (except I feel 25 years old lol) healthy as can be!
It’s like an early 40th b-day gift to find that I’m completely healthy. 💚
Health is the greatest wealth.
I thank my super kidney for holding up so well. It stepped up to the plate and picked up the slack, no problem! And still going strong after two years!
I’m thankful for my amazing health not only for the good it does me but what it allowed me to do for someone else. It’s a gift to be able to share it and make someone else healthy, too. If I had another one to give, I sure would! 💙
I loved my experience at Penn and am proud & honored to get to call myself one of their “alum.” Lol
Yesterday, at my last appointment with one of my transplant team members, she thanked me again for my kidney donation (and for the thank you letter & gifts I dropped off, recently). She said it was an amazing thing to do for the whole community. I loved hearing that. The impact of organ donation is expansive & lasting. It never loses its relevance no matter how many years later.
I love being part of this whole Penn living donor community. I woke up this morning with that sentimental feeling again of my patient journey there being over. But I’m always going to be part of the community and have a place there. (They even took our pictures to put up in their center and had us sign a living donor flag! I love that 💙)
I plan to keep in touch with the staff through the events that take place every year, like the organ donor walks and celebrations. They asked for my recipient and me to join them at the events. They LOVE our story.
During the holiday season, along with some gifts, I took them a pages-long thank you letter, sharing our entire heartwarming story and all the amazing things we can do after transplant/donation. They said they were all blown away! They said they don’t usually get to know the full story or situation of their living donors, just some details.
So, they loved getting to read our whole beautiful story. It brightened their day to receive the gifts and letter. My surgeon called me and asked for my permission to share it!
I encourage anyone who has had an amazing healthcare team or healthcare worker taking care of them or a family member, to give a small gift and/or thank you letter/card (if allowed, not all places allow their staff to accept gifts or even cards or letters, so checking with the hospital’s HR is best).
It can leave a lasting impact or just brighten the day of someone doing one of the most important kinds of work there is, saving lives. They may even remember it years later or be uplifted on a stressful day when they see or think of the reminder. I don’t think healthcare workers hear thank you enough even though they’re not expecting it.
I love that I was able to send a bit of joy & love to my team at the end of my journey, to say thank you.
It uplifted them even more than I realized, and they couldn’t thank me enough. I wasn’t even expecting a thank you at all! But a few of them called me on their own cell phones to thank me and told me again at my last appointment yesterday. Knowing this, I definitely recommend thank you gifts, cards, and/or letters to healthcare workers.
💙💚
And today is a BIG day! It’s my 2nd KIDNEYVERSARY/Lefty’s 2nd birthday!!! 🫘
I ordered a custom cake & gift for myself to celebrate. I can’t wait to open my gift later today lol It’s something I had custom-made on Etsy. I kept it in the package because I did not want to see it til my day! Never even saw a picture online since it’s custom-made.
In the back of my head, I kept thinking I was going to cave and rip it open sooner. Lol I’m like a little girl who can’t wait for her birthday gift. But I managed to make it to the day! I’ll share it later, along with the cake and an anniversary post or two. 🩷 I have to go pick the cake.
My dogs love birthdays and candles. They get special treats for EVERY special occasion and holiday. They know the word “cake” and “birthday.” When they see a candle being lit, they go wild, jumping around, barking, waiting for their special treat. So, I got them a special treat and decided to light a candle on the cake later, so they can get all happy lol It will be a “birthday” for them 😆😍
💚🫘💙
#kidneydonor
Xoxo Kim
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother – Bill Medley
This is a thank you letter I wrote to my kidney/organ transplant team and printed it out and took it to the transplant center at the hospital and dropped it off for them recently, with some small thank you gifts & cards. A few of them called me on their own cell phones to tell me how moved & uplifted they were by my story and gifts. They said it made their holiday season and even whole year. I even remember one of them using the term “blown away.” Lol They knew some details of my situation but not our whole story. My kidney transplant surgeon, Dr. Parsons, called me to thank me and ask for my permission to share this letter. I said yes!
We are released as a patient two years after our surgery, so in January 2026, I won’t be a patient here anymore. I was a patient here for almost three years, almost a year for my evaluation before surgery and then the two years after. I wanted to express my appreciation for the excellent care and deep compassion of my healthcare team throughout the last few years. And not only for what they did for me, personally, but the work that healthcare workers do for people in general. Healing people and saving lives is one of the best kinds of life work that someone can do. They can be doing anything, and they choose to literally save & enhance lives.
I would like to share the letter here. Everyone who hears or reads our story is amazed. Some even cry. Lol
The staff are a team of doctors, surgeons, nurses, physician assistants, med techs, and some others who are non-medical professionals but help in other ways. I hope to keep in touch with some of them through some of the organ donor events that take place, like the Donor Dash every April and the living donation celebration, hopefully every year.
Here is my letter to the Penn Transplant Institute staff:
To Mary Cate, Lauren, Nurses Cassandra & Ashley, Dr. Parsons, Colleen, and the whole Penn transplant and surgical teams,
Thank you all so much for your help & care throughout my kidney donation journey!! I’m thankful I chose Penn and would do the whole thing all over again & again if I could! I wish I had enough kidneys to give to every single person in need. It’s the best thing I ever did!
Not only did I get to help someone (possibly two people), but I also now have a great friend, which I wasn’t expecting. My kidney voucher recipient, Greg (you may have met/seen him, I brought him to the living donor celebration), and me were strangers when I heard he was in need of a new kidney. I was just planning on helping him and going on my way, no strings attached. But we have since become very good friends and have this unique & rare connection through our experiences that brought us together.
I was already accepted as a non-directed donor and in the process of donating my kidney to just anyone in need when I heard about a man in Philadelphia who was in urgent need of a new kidney. He was on dialysis for years after an unexpected diagnosis of end stage renal disease when he visited a doctor for suddenly feeling unwell.
He had no luck finding a kidney donor and kept getting sicker. Greg and his family were losing hope after years of waiting and failed attempts. A few of his friends & family members began the living donor evaluation process, but none were qualified. He was told it would take many years for a deceased donor. His only hope was a living one.
Greg had many hospital stays and severe complications of dialysis and kidney failure. There are multiple occasions, his family walked out of the hospital after visiting him, not knowing if they would ever see him again. He was constantly exhausted and in pain and getting infections. He had strict fluid & food restrictions and was constantly thirsty.
He had to quit his job because he became too sick to work. His life was in danger, and the quality of it was greatly suffering, and there seemed to be no end to his suffering. He said he spent hours and hours online, trying to find any bit of hope of eventually receiving a kidney transplant, but no hope was found.
His doctors told him he may not live the amount of years it would take for him to receive a deceased donor kidney because of how advanced his illness was. Greg said it was the darkest point in his life, receiving that devastating diagnosis and then getting sicker and sicker, living in a constant state of uncertainty without any glimmer of hope.
His dad and aunt had to become his caretakers and do mundane tasks for him. His family told me his suffering was becoming too much for him to bear and too much for them to have to witness.
Greg was struggling with the effects of dialysis and was in a deep depression. Just before I learned about him, he was on the verge of giving up and told his family he wasn’t sure he could go on much longer like this.
When I heard about him, I looked his family up on social media and sent them a message, introducing myself, and offered him the kidney voucher. I explained that I was already in the process of donating my kidney to just anyone in need, that my evaluation was already complete, and that I had the opportunity to donate the voucher to someone else, so that, if eligible for transplant, that person would be almost guaranteed to get a new kidney through my donation to an anonymous person, and likely somewhat soon, as long as there were no complications with the system or the person’s own situation. I told them I did not know anyone who needed it and would like to offer it to Greg after hearing how sick he was.
Greg and his family never heard of the voucher program and thought I made it up. They did not believe that I would donate my kidney to just anyone or that a complete stranger could just come out of the blue with a kidney for Greg, already qualified and ready for donation. They said it was too good to be true. It took a while to convince them that it wasn’t a joke or a scam.
They wanted to talk to Nurse Cassandra, but she said, even with my consent to break my patient confidentiality, the living donor team never communicates with a potential recipient or recipient family, when I asked for her permission for me to give them her work phone number so that she could tell them anything they wanted to know about me.
They only believed me after I showed them screenshots of my patient portal content, and even then, they were frequently afraid that I would change my mind about donating my kidney. At his family’s request, we got tested to see if we were a match for a possible direct donation. There was no potential recipient chosen for me yet, so I agreed to it.
Coincidentally, we turned out to live only fifteen minutes apart and be a very good match. His transplant team recommended that I donate my kidney directly to him. So, this was our plan for a while, as Greg was preparing to be evaluated for transplant.
But our situation turned out to be where it was better for him to have the voucher. We are both glad about this because then an extra person was potentially helped. Even when Greg was devastated and wasn’t sure he was going to live long enough to receive a new kidney when he found out he couldn’t have mine, he told me more than once he was so happy for the other person who would get my kidney and still tells me he’s glad it worked this way because that person was helped, too.
He remembered the joy and hope it brought him and his family and friends when he thought he was going to receive my kidney and said he was so happy that someone else and their family and friends now got to experience that. His empathy and compassion for others still ran deep even through his own despair.
That’s how I know I found a good one! I have told him, I don’t think in terms of “deserving” or “not deserving,” I want everyone to live and be healthy and don’t care what person/kind of person got my kidney (as long as he’s not a Cowboys fan! Then, I may have had to call the whole thing off or regret it 😆 jk That’s what I like to say when someone asks me what if a “bad person” got my kidney!), but if ever anyone “deserved” it, it would be him.
During his transplant evaluation, it was discovered that the dialysis & complications did severe damage to his heart, and it was a long journey to having that taken care of and being cleared for transplant. His condition was asymptomatic but life-threatening and putting him in imminent danger, even more than the kidney failure. So, he had two life-threatening health conditions at once. His prognosis, he was told, wasn’t good.
At that point, Greg’s healthcare team was not sure that Greg was going to live to be able to have a kidney transplant, they said the odds weren’t in his favor. The doctors he talked to refused to perform the heart surgery he needed because there was a significant chance he wouldn’t survive it. The news was shocking & shattering to Greg and his family. After just being so elated that he was finally getting a second chance to live and be healthy, they were told he may not survive much longer to ever get that chance.
I could have been waiting indefinitely. So, I decided to continue with non-directed donation, which was always my plan anyway and ultimately my preference as I like the idea of a random person being chosen and maximizing the impact by helping two or more. This was more distressing news for them, but I felt it was for the best for all of us. They understood my decision. Greg was devastated, but he chose to keep going and holding onto the sliver of hope he had, knowing he now had the chance, no matter how slim, for a new kidney, a chance that felt impossible before.
I made sure to only list his name on the voucher so him and his family would be assured that it would always be available for him whenever he was ready.
His family said even before we knew if it would all work out, just that little bit of hope I gave him was enough to pull him out of his depression and inspire him to hold on & keep going. It brought a little bit of light into his darkness, and even his physical health got a little bit better while he was still on dialysis because he now saw the possibility of life off of dialysis. He chose to keep focusing on the potential, the life that could be waiting for him at the end of the dark tunnel.
Greg found a heart surgeon who took the risk that no surgeon wanted to take. Even this surgeon was somewhat reluctant. He said he only risked it because Greg had a kidney donor/voucher already. If he wasn’t already so close to receiving a kidney transplant, the doctor would not have taken the chance. But he did, and he fixed Greg’s heart even better than the minimum he thought he could potentially do. Greg’s heart is now in very good condition. And he was placed back into the system for a kidney transplant.
On February 4th, 2025, just over a year after my non-directed donation, Greg received his new kidney and is doing amazing. He got his whole life back. He is especially thrilled because he is the biggest Philadelphia Eagles fan, and his Kidneyversary date turned out to be the anniversary of the 2018 Eagles Superbowl win!
In 2018, long before I met Greg, I bought a Philadelphia Eagles scarf with the date, “February 4th,” on it. In 2025, I dropped it off at Jefferson Hospital as a surprise gift for him after his kidney transplant on February 4th. I chose not to visit him so as not to potentially expose him to germs, but the nurses gave it to him for me. He said it was the best gift he ever received (the kidney being a close second. 😆)
So, his transplant date is an especially special date for him! We are so happy about that! (And he got home just in time after his transplant to watch the Superbowl win again with his dad! Two big wins for Greg all in the same week, first a successful kidney transplant and then his team winning the Superbowl!)
Now, every year, we get to have two Kidneyversary days to celebrate, his & mine! The day that Greg received his new kidney was the most amazing day, it was like reliving the day I donated mine, except I got to be outside and not in a hospital bed. It was one of my most joyful, surreal experiences. And everything turned out perfectly for him, just like for me.
His doctors told him he’s so healthy now that he can realistically expect to live with his kidney for twenty or more years. They even said he can potentially live thirty more years with it. His transplanted kidney is working as well as it possibly can, and his general health is great.
He can work again after years of being out of work because of his illness. He got his old job back six months after his transplant! He loves his job and coworkers (many of the same ones, along with the same manager, are still there and warmly welcomed him back) and couldn’t wait to work again. He can go to concerts and games with his friends. We attended the Phillies game on Organ Donation Awareness/Gift of Life Night, hosted by the Gift of Life Program, and volunteered with them there to bring visibility to organ donation.
He said it was amazing and surreal that just less than a year ago, he was on dialysis, hardly even able to leave his house, and now he was there at a game, full of energy, and volunteering to help others get the life saving organ they need, just like he did. And he can travel to visit his family in another state. Before, he couldn’t even walk up a street without becoming exhausted.
He had the honor of meeting new friends (he even made a new kidney recipient friend at the living donor celebration!), and discovering a new cafe he loves that we visit frequently for breakfast together (and he doesn’t have many food restrictions and no fluid restrictions[The fluid restriction was one of his worst struggles, he was always extremely thirsty and found it hard to cope with that]. He still keeps his diet very healthy, though).
I have become an organ donor ambassador with the Gift of Life Program, doing volunteer work to bring awareness to organ donation and encourage people to register as potential organ donors. Greg is also planning on doing the training with the Gift of Life Program to become an organ donor ambassador.
Greg is 45 years old, and it’s like life is just beginning for him. He’s full of energy and life and hopes & dreams he wasn’t able to have before. He doesn’t have to spend hours living on a machine and then spend the rest of his days exhausted. He said he feels even healthier than before he got sick. He said he felt a significant difference in his health and energy as soon as he woke up after his transplant. The kidney began working instantly, and the effects were immediate.
He frequently tells me he’s going to pay it forward and make the world a better place, to give thanks for his second chance to live(He even says he wishes he could be a living organ donor now to show his gratitude and help someone else like he was helped. That makes me laugh!). Not that it’s necessary to me because just existing as a sentient being makes someone worthy of health and life, but he said he’s going to be sure to “earn” his new kidney.
Greg wasn’t registered as a potential organ donor, previously, and his experience receiving the gift of life, himself, inspired him to register as one. I find it heartwarming to see how much it changed him for the better and how one act of kindness can inspire so many more.
He makes friends everywhere he goes and is always doing acts of kindness like giving food workers extra big tips. It’s like he has more love & gratitude than he knows what to do with! It’s just overflowing onto everyone around him.
It always fills me with awe to hear the things he can do after being too sick for so long.
For years, Greg wanted to do the Donor Dash 3k walk, but he was too sick. Finally, in 2025, just two months after his kidney transplant, he was able to do the walk. It was his first goal after transplant. And he succeeded! We walked together. He can’t wait until the next walk and is already making plans to design t-shirts for his team. We also did the 2025 Kidney Walk together for the National Kidney Foundation in October!
He is going to begin working on his dream of becoming a dialysis tech to help people in the position he was once in. He said as a former dialysis patient himself, he will know how to comfort, encourage, and uplift the people needing dialysis. It warms my heart to see him so happy and know that, along with many others, I was able to play a part in him fulfilling his dreams and going on to help others.
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.
Greg and me love our story, and we love to share it (we even found an excuse to share it with our lyft driver once!). There is nothing that either of us would change or wish was different.
He said he lives an almost completely normal life and generally feels like he’s not even sick anymore, other than occasional fatigue that his doctors said is normal for a transplant recipient, and having to take a lot of medication. He has a few side effects, but he said anything is better than dialysis and that he can’t complain.
There are so many seemingly small things he can do that healthy people may not even realize. When we think of someone getting an organ transplant, we often think of the most obvious things like the fact they can now go on vacations or have kids or get to meet their grandkids, or have a career…which is all great.
But there are so many simple joys that are now a reality for them, that are often overlooked by the healthy, like the fact that they can taste their favorite food again or eat ice cream (Greg was thrilled about this!) or not have fluid intake restrictions or can work in their garden, spend holidays at home with family instead of in a hospital, and just go for a walk outside without becoming exhausted.
Greg can now do all of these things and more.
I hope the same is true for my kidney recipient. I frequently think of him. I like to joke that it’s like having a long, lost twin out there somewhere! I was so happy to find out basic information about my kidney recipient when I asked. I had no preference but was a bit curious about the age & gender of the person, but I wasn’t sure it was ok to ask at first. Finding out that I have a “kidney brother” somewhere, was just as amazing as the day I donated my kidney. It made him seem more human in my mind and less an abstract concept, and added more joy to my already joyful experience.
I like to think that I have two kidney brothers. Maybe someday I’ll get to meet/communicate with my other one. But even if not, I’m so thankful for the opportunity to help someone! The joy never fades.
Sharing my kidney is just as much a gift to me as to my recipient/s.
Donating one of my kidneys to a person in need has been my dream for so many years since I read a heartwarming true story in a newspaper or magazine (It was so long ago, that detail is a bit hazy now), about a man who donated his kidney to a stranger. Being a dad inspired him, and he said we’re all the same beyond any differences, and anyone he looked at could be his own son and is just as worthy. It inspired me.
When I read that story, I instantly knew that would be me one day, sharing one of my kidneys with a person in need. Almost two decades later, it was! It just deeply resonated with me. I found it so beautiful to see the lengths that one human would go to save another, giving up a literal piece of himself.
I wasn’t sure when it would happen, but I knew one day, it would. If I have more than enough of something for myself, I see no reason not to give some to someone who doesn’t have enough. I had two perfect kidneys. And I have always been in perfect health. I wanted to share that so someone else can have even just a little bit of what I have. It made complete sense to me to give one away to anyone who needed it. The fact that I don’t know someone, or may not like the person, doesn’t make that person less worthy or less in need.
At that moment I read the story, it was not an urgent “calling” like it would become years later, but even then, I had this deep conviction that I have everything it takes and would do that for someone one day in the future. Through the years, thoughts about it were recurring, becoming more frequent and intense, often randomly, but not until 2023, did everything become perfectly aligned and right, giving me the motivation & ability to go through with it.
Some years ago, I, randomly, tried to donate my kidney at Jefferson Hospital’s transplant center. There was no particular reason I chose to then. I chose them because the location was very convenient with my work back then. But they stopped communicating with me with no explanation, then the initial covidvirus outbreak occurred, and my financial & work situations changed. I still frequently thought about donating my kidney to anyone in need and knew I eventually would.
That story I read many years ago stayed with me for all those years until my dream finally came true, 15+ years later. In March 2023, I saw a request on the subway one night after work, for a 76 year old Pennsylvania man, asking for someone to become a non-directed kidney donor and donate the voucher to him. I realized that I had the appropriate work, financial, and living situations again.
At that moment I felt the “call.” I knew instantly. It felt like being on the cusp of something incredible, a feeling that was lacking when I attempted to donate at Jefferson Hospital years earlier. The second I saw the request that night, without any hesitation at all, I looked up the National Kidney Registry and filled out the application on the train, to be a non-directed donor with intention to give the voucher to that man. If it did not work out with him, I planned to still donate my kidney to just anyone.
I knew the potential benefits to a kidney recipient significantly outweighed any potential risks to myself and that even if I did experience one or more of the rare potential complications at any point, at least it would be because I tried to help someone. I could never regret it. The only thing I would ever regret would be not taking the chance when I had it.
Someone else did not have the luxury of “maybe” that I had. Maybe I would experience a complication or maybe not, but someone else was already suffering complications of an illness, and all it would take was a small part of my body to help that. Giving up some of my comfort for a while, taking on a little bit of someone else’s pain, to possibly give someone a whole life, was more than worth it.
I knew as soon as I saw that request on the subway that it would lead me to do something amazing and profound, something I have always known I would do. There was this feeling like this is it, the seed that was planted all those years before, finally blossoming into fruition. There was no uncertainty, no hesitation. This remained true throughout my entire evaluation process. There was never a hint of reconsidering my decision or backing out. I had this overwhelming feeling like I was made to help someone, whether this person or someone else, and that in the end, it would all work out for the best for all involved.
Thankfully, it turned out that man on the screen on the subway was already helped by another stranger when my evaluation was through. 200+ people, mostly strangers, in & near Philadelphia, volunteered to give their kidney for him. Nearly all were rejected, but I loved seeing that it’s not as rare as people may think, for a human to reach out to help another struggling human, no matter what lengths they have to go. It inspired me that over 200 people did not hesitate to help a man in need, and I know many more would have reached out to help him if they saw his request.
So, I got to go on and help someone else. Ten months later, I donated my kidney to whoever needed it. That sign on the subway is what set the whole thing in motion. Those ten months brought me nothing but overwhelming joy. I loved the whole process and anticipation. It brought extra joy to my everyday, knowing I was about to help someone in need. I cherish the memories now. Some living organ donors talk about a big depressing “let down” after the whole thing is over, once the surgery takes place and the novelty wears off and there’s no longer this big thing to look forward to. But for me, the joy has only deepened since then.
I considered looking for another stranger in need to donate the voucher to after I learned that man was already helped. It was a coincidence that I happened to hear about Greg just as I was searching for someone in need. The donation process took a bit longer because I waited for Greg for a while until I realized non-directed donation would be best while donating the voucher to him.
Thank you for giving me that chance to help someone.
During the evaluation process, there was some concern about my depression history. I had to do another psych evaluation with the social worker in case the surgery or any aspect of donation triggered my depressive condition. I appreciated their care for not only my physical safety but also my mental health, but my experience had and still has the opposite effect! It elates me and lifts me, even in low moods.
I am just as healthy as when I had two kidneys! Nothing changed at all. I wouldn’t even know I had surgery or only have one kidney except for the scars (which I love, and wish would stop fading! Quite a few people who saw my incisions/scars {I love to show them off 😆} said I clearly had a great surgeon!). I remember just less than two weeks after my surgery, jokingly saying I wonder if they even took the kidney! I was nearly 100% back to my usual self already. I walked to my three week post op appointment! Two hours without stopping. And walked the two hours back home!
Greg and me both have had an extremely easy recovery with little to no pain or fatigue and no complications. We both have said it’s almost like we never even had surgery. I only needed the prescription pain med on my first evening home. Then, after that, never even needed Tylenol. And not one nap during my recovery! I was already back to work a few weeks later, just keeping the pets company who did not need walks (I’m a pet nanny for work), and a few months later, I was back to work completely with no problems at all.
I am as energetic as ever. I often walk 10+ hours a day and love to brag about how amazing that is for someone with only one kidney (even though I know having only one kidney doesn’t put me at a disadvantage for walking or any other physical activity)! I also like to brag about my two superpowers: being in two places at once (I heard that Lefty is somewhere in Minnesota!), & peeing for two 😆
None of this would have been possible for Greg and so many others without all of you on the living donor team and the work you do for living donors and, in turn, our recipients.
I thank all of you for being part of my journey and for all the work you do helping people and literally saving lives.
I found the whole Penn staff to be warm and caring. I remember having anxiety on my way to my first day of medical testing at Penn and even the night before. I was concerned that my blood pressure would not show as accurate because of my anxiety and was trying to think of ways to calm myself and my racing heart. Nothing was working. But as soon as I got inside and met the various team members, my anxiety completely dissipated, and every part of me became calm.
While the work itself is important, I also believe that the way healthcare workers interact with their patients is important and makes all the difference to us. I have received nothing but kindness, positivity, and compassion when interacting with the Penn staff, all throughout my evaluation process, hospital stay, and after.
The atmosphere at Penn is so positive and calming. On the morning of my surgery, I woke up with a palpable sense of inner peace that stayed with me even as I laid on the operating table waiting to go under. All of the healthcare workers in the operating room that morning were uplifting and funny and compassionate. And they played my favorite music for me, Oldies!
I was a half hour late for surgery because I got up later than I meant to and then got lost that morning and ended up in the wrong place with no idea where to go. The only person around was a friendly security guard who also had no idea where I was supposed to be. It held everyone up. I could tell a few of the doctors/nurses were frantic and trying to hurry up and get the whole thing going after having to wait for me.
I also overheard them talking outside the room about the challenges they had because of me showing up late (I’m still sorry!!). But none of them showed any anger or even annoyance, they even said it was no problem when I said I’m sorry. That’s one thing I always remember, the patience and understanding they showed me. They were also kind enough to take a picture of Lefty for me when I requested it before sending it off to its new forever home!
Another thing I have appreciated is the surgical team standing at the bed as I was waking up just after surgery, and gently saying my name over and over and telling me I was awake now. The first thing I saw was their smiling faces as soon as everything came into focus. And they told me I gave a beautiful kidney and thanked me for giving the gift of life. It can be confusing or startling to wake up somewhere that isn’t home, especially in a place like a hospital, before everything registers. They made sure I woke up knowing that everything was good.
That’s something I will always remember.
It may seem like a simple, unimportant thing, but it made my experience better and was a soothing and positive thing to wake up to.
Other than Dr. Parsons, I don’t remember the names of any of the doctors or nurses taking care of me that day or throughout my brief hospital stay, but I do remember that care, compassion, and patience.
I haven’t met one Penn team member who isn’t extremely caring and dedicated and welcoming.
I am in a living kidney donor group online with living donors all around the world, mostly U.S. donors, and one recurring complaint that I see is that some living donor centers do not show support or compassion to their donors after the surgery. They kind of forget about them or brush them off after the kidney is taken. It’s more common than we would like to think. I always tell people I have been lucky to not have this problem with Penn. Not only are we not dismissed or forgotten but are acknowledged with gratitude after our donation.
All of my questions before and after my kidney donation surgery, even the slightly off-topic ones that weren’t necessarily your responsibility to answer, were answered quickly and thoroughly, and the responses were always thoughtful and caring.
My interactions with most of the Penn team have been brief and not very frequent, but still, the impact is very positive and lasting.
I am writing all this in detail to remind you of the full extent of the impact of the work you do and the compassion you display. I know healthcare workers are often overworked, burned out, and sometimes constantly busy. It may not always be positive or easy work and can be stressful, I’m sure, but it touches countless lives for the better.
I am so honored to get to have this experience and to have worked with your team for the last few years. If ever I meet anyone considering living organ donation (I hope to inspire some along the way!), I will be sure to recommend Penn Transplant Institute and share with them my positive experience with you.
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.
Even if I never got to know my kidney voucher recipient or my actual recipient, I would be so thankful for my opportunity to get to help someone, but getting to see firsthand the incredible impact, it adds to my experience.
I hope Lefty is doing well, and I will continue to take good care of Righty and bring awareness to living organ donation (and organ donation in general)!
My kidney donation journey at Penn is coming to an end after almost three years, so I want to say thank you and share with you my amazing experience before I go.
Thank you, again, to every member of the Penn living donor team, the surgical team, the general Penn transplant team, and all of the healthcare workers who took care of me during my hospital stay after surgery.
With love,
Kim
So, there’s our story!
If you have a healthcare worker or team of them, I recommend showing them your gratitude & appreciation with a small gift, letter, or card. Unfortunately, this is not allowed at every hospital/health center, so, checking with the hospital’s HR first is a good idea. Healthcare workers are professionals doing their job, but they’re also just people who don’t expect it but love to be acknowledged for the good they do. They definitely don’t get enough of it. I was not expecting any of them to acknowledge my letter or gifts to them. I was almost sure they would appreciate it but wasn’t expecting busy Healthcare workers to really stop and acknowledge it. But they couldn’t express enough gratitude or joy!
You can brighten someone’s whole day or even leave a lasting impact just by sharing how they helped you or someone close to you or even just thanking them for the work they do in general.
Xoxo Kim 💚💙
Today, I turned another year older, and Starbucks & Wawa gave me a free coffee! Lol I was so happy. At Starbucks, I got to choose anything I wanted. I chose this cherry chai latte. Yum! 🍒 It’s so pretty!
Recently, I had a trip to a hospital emergency department for a tooth infection that spread everywhere. My face was swollen, and I was in agony. My second emergency room visit in three months because this tooth is giving me problems. I’m a lot better now. Let’s hope this is the last of this tooth causing me issues. It has to be extracted. I was cursed with bad teeth, it runs in my family. I need full dentures. I’m working on that now.
Anyway, this is me today! I took this picture by accident when I was trying to fix my hair. Lol I had my phone against a wall. Not bad for being nearly 40 years old! 😆
After medical testing at the hospital recently, I found out I am in perfect health (other than the infection ravaging my face lol). Everything is perfect, nothing even slightly off. My solitary kidney is now functioning at almost 100%! That’s wild. Lol It’s literally doing the work of two helathy kidneys. I recently walked for EIGHT hours without stopping! I began at 8:00am and continued til 4:00pm when I got home. I wish I would have remembered to put a step counter on my phone!
I recently did a 3k walk with my friend/kidney recipient. With his new kidney, he was healthy enough this year to do the walk! Because I donated my kidney to “the next person on the wait list” in the U.S., I was given a kidney voucher to give to anyone I want so that person can get a new kidney soon. I looked for a sick stranger because I did not know any sick people. I found out about a man who lives close to where I do in Philadelphia and gave him the kidney voucher. He got his new kidney through my donation, and now we are good friends! 💙💚
So, just sharing this brief life update! I haven’t posted in a while. I want to get more storage space.
Sending love & hugs to all who wish to receive.
Xoxo Kim 💕
“The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where
But, I’m strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother
So, on we go
His welfare is my concern
No burden is he to bear
We’ll get there
For I know
He would not encumber me
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother💙
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother – Bill Medley
I did not want to trick anyone for a few seconds but couldn’t think of a more fitting title to this post. Lol
OMGOMGOMG!!!
I received some HAPPY news!! It made my heart skip a beat, literally lol. It’s like something inside me shifted in a deep way, and I’m not the same me I was before. And, I just have to share!
I’m not having a baby, but…
It’s a……BOY!!! 💙
And I’m glowing!
🤣😂
I just found out I have a kidney brother!!!
I’m overwhelmed.
It’s the most heartwarming thing, to find out about the person I share a set of kidneys with.
This must be the same feeling expectant mamas feel when the ultrasound tech/doctor says “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl.” (Yeah, I know they can’t actually know til the gender identity develops a few years later, but it’s still a happy moment) A surreal, awe-inspired feeling. And, it doesn’t even matter the personality or anything or if it’s mutual, just unconditional love.
Last year, I volunteered to give my kidney to the next person on the waitlist in the U.S. who I matched with.
It was given to a fifty-something-year-old man in Minnesota.
I just found out!
I knew he’s in Minnesota (I’m in Pennsylvania) and that his transplant was a success (our kidney began working instantly after it was connected to his body), but did not know the age or gender.
I had a feeling all along that my kidney would go to a man. It was like a gut feeling.
I did not care about the gender or age of the person who would receive my kidney; everyone wants to live & be healthy, no matter our age/gender. But, I was slightly curious. At first, I was a little bit curious. Then that curiosity began to fade to where I was almost indifferent. Then after almost a year, the curiosity came back and more intensely. I thought I would never know.
I feel like an identical twin missing my other half as if we were separated at birth, a feeling that just crept up on me after around a year. Lol (I guess we’re not identical though as we don’t have the same exact anatomy 😆)
Now, I learned through my transplant team that he’s a 50-something-year-old man. We’re anonymous strangers, so that’s all I know.
It made me so happy to receive even just that little bit of information. Like an indescribable feeling. Happiness & warmth. Awe. It adds to my experience and makes the person less an abstract concept and more human in my mind. Just to have a general idea in my head of the person who traveled this journey with me and laid on an operating table the same morning I did, a few states away, so our destinies became one.
It made the whole experience really sink in.
To receive this news makes me even happier than I realized it would. 💙💙💙 It’s one of the most amazing happiest experiences of this whole life of mine. I did not know just what I was missing til I found out. There’s no way to even put it into words.
It’s like having a long-lost brother out there somewhere. He’s a complete stranger to me, yet he’s my own flesh & bl0od. He literally has a piece of me inside of him.
Now, I want to meet him 😆😭😍
I have two kidney brothers now because my kidney voucher recipient is also a man. Lol When we donate our kidney to “the next person on the waitlist,” we get to choose any specific person in the country to also receive a new kidney through our donation (we can choose five people, and the first one to receive the kidney, the others get canceled out. I made sure to only choose one so as not to get someone’s hopes up, then someone else gets it first, or so he wouldn’t have anxiety all along that maybe someone else would get it first and cancel out his place).
I looked for another stranger in need since I did not know anyone who needed a kidney transplant. I heard about a man who lives close to where I do who was in urgent need. After I donated my kidney to an anonymous stranger, he got his new kidney through my donation. I did get to meet him in person, and we’re friends on Facebook! 💚
Two new (kidney) brothers. How lucky am I?! 😁 Never had a brother before! 🫘
Xoxo Kim 💕
“When I first learned about her, no less than two million buffalo stampeded across my chest. (That is just an estimate at the risk of sounding dramatic.) When the dust finally settled, when chaos clipped its own wing & the Earth relinquished her thunder, I found the remains of a heart not twenty feet from my aching body, trampled into a bloody mess. This heart did not belong to me, but I ripped open my own ribcage just to double-check.”
Years ago, I had a close friend of almost ten years. We worked together and saw each other almost everyday. She was a big part of my world. I frequently talked about her when she wasn’t around, recounting all the hilarious things she said or the kind things she did for me or others. I found that she talked about me when I wasn’t around also. And she always had something she couldn’t wait to tell me, usually about one of her grandkids. I never imagined we could ever be apart. Life without her was unfathomable. It made no sense.
Then one day she just dropped dead.
At work.
A heart attack they said.
It was quick. Probably painless. For her. She was already gone when her body hit the floor. I was not there that day. I was on a meditation retreat. When I returned to work I saw her folded up newspaper and her half full bottle of water on her table. The water she was drinking and the paper she was reading just moments before her death took place. They never took it away.
I thought I would never recover. It was the absolute most traumatic experience of this entire life of mine. It wrecked me completely. I could not sleep and felt I would collapse in grief & trauma everyday wherever I was. I would wake up in a panic in the middle of the night. My body was constantly in the “fight or flight” mode. I forgot what it felt like to not be afraid. Her death devastated my world. Nothing else I ever experienced in this life came close to that trauma.
I constantly felt the urge to scream hysterically or scream her name until my throat was raw & tasted of blood. I imagined myself frantically climbing up the tallest skyscrapers in the city, like a wild animal, with just my arms and legs, and screaming her name off the rooftops, not to summon her, but to expel the violent primal pain ripping through my body with every breath I took. I used to cover my face with my pillow in the dead of night to mask the screams. It was not crying or sobbing. It was screams. Primitive screams. Fear, pain ripping through me, trying to claw its way out of my body and escape into the night. Sometimes I would lay on a floor in a fetal position, holding myself, my entire existence throbbing hysterically. When I was able to finally drag myself up, I would look in a mirror and my eyes would be completely black. My face distorted by terror. It was a shock to see. I felt like the embodiment of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
I had no idea how to handle the fear of the thought of her being gone forever. I felt like I would go to the ends of the Earth to find her. It was the same sense of panic as a phobia. (I have, now dormant after exposure therapy, lifelong Claustrophobia, so I know). The panic of knowing she was gone forever, never able to return, the permeance of her absence, the permeance of death in general, death itself, threatened to drive me insane. Just very faintly, a hint of that feeling of possibly going insane without her here lingers today, only rarely appearing and is more like a hologram or a shadow than anything of substance. I knew people die and have even known people who died. But I had no idea someone can just die. I had no experience with it when it was someone that close to me. I suddenly realized the hard way that absolutely anyone can die and without warning. It was a rude awakening. I did not like it.
My mundane sense of safety & security was stripped away forever like being soundly asleep and having a warm comforting blanket unexpectedly ripped off of you and a bucket of ice water suddenly poured over your exposed body before you ever get the chance to process what is happening. For a while I lived in a constant state of confusion & shock.
I wanted to go back to my safe little bubble where no one close to me ever dies and couldn’t possibly die, where it was only something I heard about and knew in an abstract way, never my reality, my nightmare.
Sometimes I wondered if my own heart could handle the pain or if it too would soon give out, suddenly stop forever just like hers. There was once a couple months after her death where I truly believed I was having a heart attack too at 28 years old. I literally thought I was dying. It was something I never experienced before. I woke up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, plagued with the grief, but now accompanied by something else. My chest was caving in. It felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t catch my breath. It felt like something crushing me. I dragged myself out of bed and looked in a mirror. My eyes were completely black. My mouth was agape in horror. Clutching my chest, I slid to the floor to die. Literally I believed the grief was physically k!lling me. It was the most terrifying thing imaginable.
Suddenly I realized it was the beginning stages of a panic attack. I never had one before. The only real anxiety I ever had before that was related to my claustrophobia but never resulted in a panic attack. I stopped it in its tracks with a meditation technique I learned. I never had one again but continued to live in a near constant state of panic for a while.
My whole world crumbled on top of me. It was like I had to learn to live again. It took years to rebuild myself.
I felt like I was drowning (when I was 11 years old I almost drowned in a swimming pool at a family member’s house, and this felt exactly the same) and like I was missing a limb. Every single day it felt like part of my body was missing, like my own flesh & blood was torn away. It felt like I had to learn to breathe again. Breathing no longer came naturally. Sometimes I was literally gasping for breath. My chest felt like it was being crushed. It truly felt like a nightmare I could not wake up out of. I did not grow up with Diane, I met her at 20 years old. I only knew her for less than ten years. We were not biologically related. But for some reason it feels and has always felt like her love has been with me all life long, for as long as I can remember, and her death feels, even to this day, almost like a biological injury, like I lost a piece of myself.
It took years for me to “get over it” as much as I ever will. She’s the closest person to me who ever died. I had friends/family who died before her, but nothing prepared me for this. My pets dying was not less painful, but I had pets who died since I was little and unfortunately expect that. I never imagined I would lose a human so close to me and so much a part of me.
She was old enough to be my mom and has sons around my age or a bit older. She showed me a love that was like a Mother’s love. She would give me loving mom hugs. She was very protective and would yell at anyone she thought was doing something wrong to me. One day my dad came to work and was messing around joking and said “What are you doing?!” And my friend was going by in a car and heard him and she yelled “She’s working!! The fuck’s it look like she’s doing,” not knowing it was my dad just playing around. He was pissed. 😂
She used to invite me to her house for Thanksgiving & Christmas with her big family but I always had family plans and never accepted the invitations. Now I wish I did at least once. She would make me lunch and check up on me and even brag about me like I was her own daughter. All three of her sons wanted to date me at one point and would argue over me, and she told me she wanted me as a daughter in law but that I was too good for all of them. 😆 She said “Wait til they all get their shit together and then choose one.” 🤣 Diane was a widow, her husband died years before and she stayed single. Her three boys and grandkids were her world. I met all of them. They would come to our work, and she would proudly show them off.
She frequently told me I was too good for this world. She also told me one of her biggest fears in life was that this cruel world would turn me cold, harden me, and that I would lose my sweetness, my soft, gentle ways. My warmth. She told me she never met anyone with my level of kindness and never knew it existed until she found me. She said I have a heart unmatched by any other and she was afraid that heart could grow cold.
I once overheard her expressing this same fear to someone else and telling them one of her only wishes in life is for me to stay kind, warm, caring, even in the face of the world’s bitterness. She made me promise her more than once that I would never lose myself to the cruelty & coldness of others. I always had to say “I promise.” Sometimes, years after her death, I have felt that happening and then I remembered my promise to her and felt myself soften.
She would often say “Love ya, girl” when we were parting ways.
“Unfuckingbelievable”
The last word I ever heard her say.
It was a cold February morning. A sardonic smile creeping at the edges of her mouth, scoffing at the situation before angrily slamming a window closed in my face. I remember it so vividly. It’s burned in my mind. She slammed the window closed without giving me a chance to say goodbye. Then she turned her back to me and walked away.
I never saw her again.
That last encounter makes me laugh because it is so her. I did not like her when we first met. I thought she was obnoxious. She asked me how much something costs. I meant to say 75 cents or two for $1 and slipped and said 50 cents or two for $1. And she said “Yeah, no shit it’s two for $1.” 🤣 I never imagined then that I could come to love her the way that I did.
It doesn’t hurt me that we never got to properly say goodbye. It’s quite fitting. We never had a proper hello either. Diane walked out on me the same way she walked in. Loud. Sarcastic. Cynical. Fiery.
It really was just so her. And I wouldn’t have her any other way.
She was loud and sarcastic and cursed constantly just in mundane conversations. If she was angry or unhappy with us we knew it. She was also very kind & giving.
She loved Rod Stewart. And strawberry ice cream. And hot chocolate. And soft pretzels. We would sit together on cold Winter nights laughing and drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream and playing Rod Stewart songs. The memories make me dizzy.
I always said if I knew her heart was going to stop beating, that last day I saw her I would have cracked open my own chest, ripped my own heart out if I could have, and handed it to her. I would have given my heart to Diane so she could meet her grandbaby and so she could have more cones of strawberry ice cream and so that she could hear one more Rod Stewart song and so that she could keep yelling at her boys for “not having their shit together” and so that she could keep giving big tips to food workers (as food workers ourselves we had no money, but she always gave her last dollar to someone else).
She already had my heart. But if I could I would have given her every beat of it I have left, to keep her here.
She was about to have a (great) grandbaby and could not wait to meet him. It was all she talked about. She died at 58 years old, just before he was born. I got to meet that baby and tell his sweet mom (her granddaughter) how much she already loved him, how he was all she talked about at work.
I have a sterling silver necklace with her name engraved on it and her birthstone (the one I’m wearing in this picture) that I bought after she died. I think of her often. It has been nearly ten years without her, but she’s always somewhere in the back of my mind, I can always feel her. While I felt the loss so deeply & so profoundly and to some extent still do, I never felt that I lost her love. It feels like it has never gone away. It’s an ingrained part of me that can never go away. It feels almost as essential to me as my DNA.
My grief for Diane is now quiet, calm. It’s as mellow as it will ever be. Such a sharp contrast to what it used to be. Even the “flare ups,” you know the ones that hit at random moments or are triggered by a memory or anniversary or certain part of the year, are quite soft now. It no longer traumatizes me or floors me or provokes the urge to scream into the night. And my eyes are no longer black with terror at the thought of her never walking this Earth again. There’s a somber acceptance now. A sad knowing that can coexist with me.
I am still sad. There is still heartbreak. But I can breathe again. My head feels like it’s above water.
Every now & again I feel a wave approaching. A wave of that grief I know so well. The grief that used to knock me to the floor or the ground, wherever I was standing. The grief that knocked the wind out of me, leaving me breathless. I brace myself for the blow as it comes at me. But when it arrives it’s soft & gentle. Briefly touching me, almost like a caress before bouncing off. It doesn’t take me under like it used to. There may be a hint of that despair riding on each wave. Sometimes there is still a sharp pang in the gut. But it never hits like it used to. It’s like an Ocean’s wave by the time it reaches the sand and only comes up to your ankles. You can still feel the piercing coldness of it and the distant or potential threat of it knowing how powerful it once was, how uproarious & v!olent. But it’s harmless. It’s just there. There may even be a touch of beauty to it.
Today I no longer think about what I lost but what I had. Her love was a gift that never had to be given to me but was.
And I am so so lucky.
Randomly, I write about Diane and share it. Ten years later she is still my inspiration for writing. I have written about her even before she died. My last post about her a while ago is something I titled “The Forgotten Mourners” and is about how the loss of a platonic friend is disenfranchised grief (and especially when it’s the loss of an online friend or a coworker).
It’s always someone else’s grief first. It belongs to the spouse or to the children or to the parents. It’s never ours. We’re always lost in the shadows of their mourning, the “real” mourners, seemingly hijacking their grief. This can make it so it feels like it’s not our place to grieve or to grieve as deeply as we are. Whenever my grief would reach its pinnacle I told myself to tone it down. What about her sons? Her grandkids? What about her siblings & “real friends?” Who am I to tread? Years ago shortly after she died and I wrote about her death, I asked everyone to withhold any sympathy/compassion directed at me, I said it wasn’t my loss, that it was her family’s loss, the loss of her “real friends,” I was just a little old work friend.
Years later I take that back. She was my friend. I was her friend. And it is a tragic loss to me, one that has left me with a deep gaping wound that took years to heal. One that still marks me today. Our grief is ours to claim. Some losses are more profound than others and someone grieving for the same person may have it worse. I’m sure losing a spouse, for example, is more devastating or extensive than losing a coworker. But that doesn’t make the grief for a work friend any less valid or any less painful than it is in its own context. There is unfortunately enough grief to go around.
My love for Diane has never faded like the worst of the grief has. My sense of missing her also hasn’t.
If I could whisper one thing into the uni-verse that could reach her it would be:
“I love you, Diane. I love you.”
“The rhythm of my heart
Is beating like a drum
With the words ‘I love you’ rolling off my tongue” ❤️
I promise.
Xoxo Kim ❤️
Boundless, indiscriminate compassion.
I’m not always kind or pleasant and haven’t been for the last week with all the trolls and oppressors. I have been arguing & sh!tposting all week Lol I don’t believe everyone deserves kindness always.
But I never wish d3ath or suffering on anyone and in general would go to great lengths to stop it even for someone I don’t like. I have even been called an enabler and “mental” because of some of the people I would save.
I wouldn’t be friends with just anyone or let just anyone into my space. But there are very few people I wouldn’t go to great lengths to save (people who would use it for evil actions and have the power to in a large scale way) and no one I would get joy out of seeing them suffer.
This may be considered by many as not a good thing, but it actually is because even if it’s not good to help or care about “bad people,” my compassion embraces all the good and average people as well. There are way too many people who don’t care about anyone at all. I much prefer someone who cares about everyone than no one. To me just being a sentient being makes someone worthy of basic compassion. Kindness? Not necessarily. Forgiveness? Again, not necessarily. But compassion, yes. This isn’t a philosophy or argument, it’s just the way I naturally am. I have always been this way. I don’t expect everyone to agree, and most people probably don’t. I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse, just different.
I’m also overly empathetic (empathy is different than compassion, but the two are often mistaken as the same) and cannot stand it. It’s mostly only with physical pain/suffering. When someone is suffering physically, even a terrible person or character in a fiction movie, I feel literally like I’m being t0rtured. I can’t bear it and can’t even watch those scenes. My compassion is something I have always experienced. But I think the empathy came later. I always had basic empathy just like everyone else, but the more developed empathy I have now I think came years ago after I began getting recurring devastating & debilitating headaches. It’s not a choice or train of thought or philosophy. And it’s not something I want. I can’t even watch horror movies I want to watch when there are too many graphic scenes because I feel like my own guts are being carved out. And after I turn it off it takes me a while to recover psychologically.
If I could flip a switch or give up a piece of myself to stop all the suffering in the world even for “bad people,” I wouldn’t hesitate even if it meant I had to take on some pain myself. I absolutely cannot stand illness & suffering. No matter who it is experiencing it.
Xoxo Kim 😘
Beth’s Ghost
She lays in bed alone
Late at night
Wide awake
Shrouded in the suffocating loneliness
That old familiar companion
That never leaves her side
Her mind drifts to a long ago
That is so out of reach now it’s almost
Too painful to remember
Her body heavy with the memories
Of what used to be
Before things got so dark
It feels like another life
One that wasn’t hers
Could never be hers
A million lifetimes ago
Like another dimension
Where a different version of herself exists
A happier version
Knowing only innocence & love
The nostalgia leaves her breathless
Knocking the wind out of her
Painful & joyful alike
She lays beneath her soft silken sheets
Feeling like a distorted replica of her former self
A contorted character in a dark novel, an empty shell of what used to be
As if her life were a convoluted story inspired by some distant reality that was once hers
Just when her despair
Reaches a new depth
I find myself seeping into the cracks
Of her shattered mind
Uninvited
Creeping into her darkest spaces
Taking up residence in her darkness
Feeling it surrounding me
Like a midnight melody
Somber, sweet, aching
She hears me
humming the song
She wrote
As she bolts upright in her bed
Trying to discern
If her midnight serenade is real or
A figment of her sad imagination
I journey through all the crevices of her brain, the recesses of her mind, and all the delicate veins, tracing the curves of her body with my tender touch
Trying to learn all of her ways
All of her secrets
The intimate longings of her heart
So I can sing them back to her
Mirroring her own love
And showering her in it
Like a waterfall of nectar cascading over
Her rocky, tumultuous world
And soothing the darkness in her soul
My humming gets louder
As she gets up and walks to the doorway
She hears my voice up the hall
Gently singing the song in her bones
One hand on the doorframe, she tentatively looks down the dark hallway, afraid of what she may see but her curiosity too strong to quell
Seeing my slender silhouette on the cream colored curtain, doing starlit pirouettes
My long hair blowing in the breeze
She freezes
And blinks
As I vanish into the night
She opens her eyes
And in that fraction of a second
I am gone
She walks along the hall til she reaches the opened window
And stares at the now blank curtain
blowing softly
As moonlight drifts in
She reaches out
And touches the curtain
Gently rubbing her hand down the soft fabric
Pulling it aside to look in back
Confusion written all over her face
As she looks around, peering into the darkness
Of the hall
The darkness matching the darkness within
She begins to slowly walk back to her room
Her hair hanging softly down her back
Resting against her pastel pink lacey lingerie top
That reveals the soft smooth ivory skin beneath
Her lips are full & pink
Glistening
As she calls out
To whatever apparition
Lurks in her darkness
I whisper her name
Into her ear
So lightly
Like the breeze
That creeps in through the window
She jumps
And shudders
A chill running up her spine
As she walks back to the window
And closes it
The curtains now hanging
Still, lifeless
Her bare feet make a soft padding sound
Against the wooden floorboards as they creak in the night
I silently float beside her
My mind connecting with hers
She can’t see me
But she can feel me
In every breath she takes
She turns to the side and catches my shadow
As I instantly disappear
She can hear my soothing voice
Caressing the shards of her mind
And feel my loving embrace
Around her shoulders
She pulls away
Unsure if it’s real or imagined
I move closer
Until my hair falls over her shoulder
Like a shadow in the night
My glossed red lips
Just barely touch her cheek
As she quickly reaches up
And brushes her cheek with her hand
She turns, abruptly
And we are face to face
So close, she can feel my breath in her face
Like the kiss of a midnight breeze
She sees through me
Then for a moment our eyes seem to meet
Just for one infinitesimal moment
A knowing look
suddenly crosses her face
Like a fleeting light
Piercing the darkness
Then fading away
As quickly as it appeared
She turns and walks briskly back
To her bedroom
And slams the door
Shutting me out
Willing me out of her mind
Out of her awareness
Out of her blo0dstream
Out of her soul
Her darkness closes in
And suffocates me
Pulling me into an endless abyss
I fall and fall
Free falling
Flailing
And crashing back into my own
World
Without her
All encompassing pain
Taking over
As I lay
Rejected & defeated
The ache
Taking over
As I lay in my bed
late into the night
I can feel her in the shadows
That surround the night
And I wonder if I’m haunting her
Tonight
Memories of me filling her mind
Memories of a love that never was
A love that could have been
but ended before it began
Memories & longings she wishes
only to banish
I lay in my darkness
Dreaming of her
In the moonlight
Memories of long ago
Of youthful, hopeful dreams now shattered, swirl around in my head as if to taunt me
As she haunts me
Tantalized by her wild beauty
Pulled into an endless night
Where I live in her nightmares
Aching for something
Homesick for a place that never existed
For a person never meant to be mine
Grieving for an old love
That never truly lived
But burns in me like a fire
That can’t be tamed
(I’m disappointed with how this poem is structured. But jetpack/WordPress won’t let me write a sentence or a few words and hit the enter or down key and have another sentence directly under it. It puts a space. I had to write this in my phone’s memo section and paste it here. But I decided to edit & add things. When I added a new sentence, it couldn’t be right under the one before it when I hit the enter key or whatever the key is called now to go to the space below a sentence or word. I saw someone else expressing the same problem while trying to write poems. For paragraphs in regular writing, like this, we don’t have to skip to underneath, but poems & songs are structured differently.
If I were to write a poem directly here instead of writing somewhere else and pasting it here
It
would
be
like
this.
Who wants all those spaces after each word or sentence in a song or poem? I always find myself rereading & editing my poems for days and days. I think it’s done and paste here then realize more work can be done. And when I edit them here, I have to have spaces or begin a whole new blog post because when I delete everything in the current one, the structure is still all messed up. We shouldn’t have all that extra work to post a poem. There are so many other glitches with this app and website too. It’s an ongoing issue for years no matter which phone I use. Sometimes it almost feels like it’s more trouble than it’s worth, but I like having this space to share things. It’s different than regular social media, and sometimes my posts are too long to fit in a social media post. So I keep this around. I’m going to upgrade it when I get money. It feels kind of ironic that I’m complaining that something is more trouble than it’s worth and in the same breath saying I’m going to invest money in it to keep around lol)
Xoxo Kim 💋❤️
What positive emotion do you feel most often?
The positive emotion I most experience is joy. I also experience happiness. But I’m currently not as happy as I could be because I don’t have close friends in person, and I am very social. For me to be as happy & fulfilled, & mentally healthy as I can be, I need close emotional connections and some degree of regular in person socialization. While many days I am happy & fulfilled, it’s still not as much as if I had close friends/a close person. And there are days I struggle to feel happy & fulfilled. There are days, even weeks or a month, where I’m depressed either directly because I have no close friends or just more susceptible to it because of not having close friends and something else will trigger the depression, even something trivial like my earphones breaking or getting lost. That’s not something that would trigger an onset of depression, it’s because I already have the condition, and that condition is more likely to flare up over trivial things when I’m not socializing or connecting enough with other humans. It’s hard as an adult to meet friends. I have struggled with loneliness & depression off & on because of having no friends for the last few years. Even with friends I can have depressive episodes or symptoms but not as frequently or deeply, and they’re easier to cope with when I have friends. To me, the social aspect of life is most important, more important than career or being financially secure. And to lack that affects my mental health.
But joy is something I experience no matter what mood I’m in or what kind of day I’m having. Even when I’m depressed I can experience joy sometimes. I experience it multiple occasions a day.
It’s a beautiful feeling and feels almost like being kid again. I experience joy over the most simple things like an iced latte or ice cream or acts of kindness, seeing my dogs, getting a new shirt or painting my nails, taking pictures of myself, photography, happy/joyful memories, a cool breeze, the changing of the seasons, walking, buildings, holidays, writing poetry, even dark poetry, finding a good sounding horror book or movie, Oldies songs, rediscovering a song I haven’t heard in years and love but forgot about, stilettos & lingerie, flowers, hugs….so many things to be joyful about! ❤️
To me, happiness is a more long-term, often calm feeling that involves a sense of fulfillment & well-being. Joy is more fleeting, can be more intense in a way than happiness, and I can experience it even when I don’t feel generally fulfilled.
I’m wishing happiness & joy to everyone else! 😁 Hopefully I get this account upgraded soon so I can add new pictures!
Xoxo Kim 💋
