“Events” and Tees Help Spread the Word

September 15, 2019 2 Comments

Summer 2019 – When will it arrive?

What’s that you say? It’s over! Wow that did go fast… But as quickly as it went, we did pack a lot of kidney shirt wearing into a brief period.

Rob’s plan was to get tee shirts, among other things, to wear and stage a couple of gatherings with friends in public places in addition to the regular day to day wearing of them to raise awareness of my renal needs.

…and so we did – planning and strategizing along with good friends Dorothy and Linda one early summer evening.

After a few weeks the goods came in – and, in addition to us and many friends wearing them individually throughout the summer, pushing the kidney message, we also wore them in groups and while in other areas away from home…Here’s a brief …

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How You Can Help Me

December 13, 2018 Leave a comment

Want to help me? It’s all about information: for you and potential donors. One of the best places to start is the transplant area of Massachusetts General Hospital’s excellent website. There you will find a lot of education. I have several articles and links published in the submenu under this menu category. These will give you a quick, easy-to-read background on the subject so you can understand the ins and outs of kidney transplant and how it is very safe for the donor and a pretty awesome thing to do for someone if life! A couple of other sites that are helpful are: The National Kidney Foundation  and The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)  So, happy reading and learning! Here are some education links from the submenu:

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The Golden Child Speaks

November 30, 2018 Leave a comment

As I mentioned on this site earlier, one of my doctors has called me “the Golden Child” for kidney donation. Not your everyday complement, but I will definitely take that designation and wear it proudly.

Basically, what the doc was saying is that my transplant should go extremely well and really have few if any complications or roadblocks (fingers crossed). There are several reasons for this:

1) People with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) as a reason for transplant generally do well because of the nature of their illness. PKD is a genetic illness confined to the kidneys. Otherwise the person is healthy. Once a new kidney is transplanted into a person with PKD (the new kidney will not contract PKD) they are “cured” of the disease and, since there is not other associated disease in their body that  the new …

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The Blood Type Factor

November 24, 2018 Leave a comment

So anyone who has heard a bit about organ transplant probably knows that, in order to be successful, blood type matching is pretty essential. It does lessen the number of kidney matches for each person unfortunately. However, programs like Kidney Swaps and chains have worked around that potential issue. For the purposes of this site, we are talking about me and my kidneys. So what blood type courses through my veins, you generously ask? Well, I am type “A positive” (insert your own type A personality joke here if you must). Blood type “A” can receiver kidneys from other type “A” and Type “O”. Type “O” is actually the “universal donor” which means they can donate to any type. Positive and negative  designations do not matter in kidney donation. Of course, with the advent of “Kidney Paired Donation (“Kidney …

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