Amy’s Story

January 2001

I’m a 30 year old teacher who donated a kidney to my adopted father 5 1/2 years ago. I also just gave birth to my first child 3 months ago.

My father was in the military and took some experimental drugs to get a weekend pass and they think that’s what caused his kidney problems. His function got down to about 4% when they put him on dialysis. He tried the at home dialysis and the hospital dialysis. Neither one was really helping things. He was a very sick unhappy person.

I am the same blood type as him but am adopted. I told him I wanted to be tested and he said no. He didn’t want me to waste my time because I would never be a match. Besides the fact that I’m terrified on needles. I insisted and he finally gave in to let me have the blood test thinking that there was no way I would be a match. Well tests later we found out that I actually matched better than a biological child.

Well we went through all the tests and scheduled the surgery! The surgery was extremely successful. The kidney started working on the table. He still hasn’t had any problems with rejection at all. He feels great now and is a totally different person.

Amy
ASTRUBE@aol.com

[LDO then asked Amy to talk more about her experience with pregnancy following her donation. Here is her response.]

Pregnancy was my big concern with planning the transplant. They removed the right kidney because they told me that that was the one that was the most stressed by pregnancy. They also took it from the front and didn’t use staples on my scar. They used steri-strips.

As far as when I was actually pregnant the only thing my doctor did was do a 24-hour urine catch to check output. Everything was just fine. She told me there wasn’t any reason to be concerned about just the one kidney. I didn’t have any problems at all.