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Author Topic: Can an altruistic donor have a say in the recipient?  (Read 3102 times)

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Offline RandW

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Can an altruistic donor have a say in the recipient?
« on: March 20, 2017, 08:12:04 PM »
How does altruistic donation occur? Is the donor consulted in whom the recipient will be? Are the recipients local?

The recipient I have been matched with is no longer able to receive a transplant. I am willing to go forward but would like to have some say in who the recipient will be. Is that possible?

Offline Fr Pat

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Re: Can an altruistic donor have a say in the recipient?
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2017, 08:36:09 PM »
If you want to have some say in who would receive your kidney, you might try to find a recipient at the "looking for a donor" section of this site, or go to someplace like www.matchingdonors.com, or search FaceBook for "seeking kidney donor", or go to www.FaceBook.com/Wanted:KidneyforJenna
     If you would be willing to give up the idea of choosing your recipient, but instead start a chain of perhaps a dozen otherwise impossible transplants, you could go to www.kidneyregistry.org They would try to match you with a recipient who has a willing but incompatible donor. You donate to that patient, and then his/her incompatible donor gives a kidney to someone else. Again the "someone else" is another patient with a willing but incompatible donor who will then pass along a kidney to the next person in the "chain". Many transplants can happen this way, but ONE non-directed donor (who gives but does not receive) is needed to start off the chain. And the dozen or so patients who get living donors in this way means that everyone on the waiting list for a deceased donor organ moves up on the list.
     best wishes,
         Fr. Pat
     

Offline Clark

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Re: Can an altruistic donor have a say in the recipient?
« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2017, 11:02:07 AM »
Dear RandW,


  What a disappointment for your intended recipient and for you. We're all altruistic donors here. The challenge you're facing is that your intended directed donation is no longer possible, and you are now considering being a non-directed donor. However, you're preferring to be a directed donor without knowing whom to direct your donation to. That's understandable, but as Fr. Pat points out, there are a lot of ways to go about this.


  Another possible approach you might consider is contacting a local transplant center, asking to speak to their donor advocate, explaining your situation, and asking to be considered the initiating donor for a chain. That way, even though you don't know the individual you're donating to ahead of time necessarily, you're the causal agent for two, twenty, or more transplants. Individual characteristics of the recipients will be less of an issue for you in that situation, won't they? Best wishes.
Unrelated directed kidney donor in 2003, recipient and I both well.
620 time blood and platelet donor since 1976 and still giving!
Elected to the OPTN/UNOS Boards of Directors & Executive, Kidney Transplantation, and Ad Hoc Public Solicitation of Organ Donors Committees, 2005-2011
Proud grandpa!

 

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