Sam’s Kidney Donation Experience Two Years Later

First, I want to thank the person(s) who started and maintain this website. It’s the best one out there and it’s helped a lot of people including myself.

I did a non-directed Laparoscopic Kidney Donation at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis in September 2002. Overall it was a positive experience for me and I would do it again. It was a test of my faith and a lesson in giving. Preachers talk about faith. I would like to see more of them take the walk. Especially Television Evangelists.

My surgery went fine but afterward I found that I could not tolerate morphine; it didn’t seem to provide adequate relief and it made my skin crawl from the inside out. I was miserable until the morphine pump was stopped. Is there a way to find out before surgery if morphine will be a problem? For about a month and a half after surgery I had a lot of trouble getting my stomach and bowels to work properly. I was really sick and lost a lot of weight. Finally a doctor suggested eating active culture yogurt which seemed to break the sickness.

I also felt like I had a bad case of chronic fatigue which seemed to last for over a year when all medical tests came back normal. I did the anti depressant thing for a while:
Doctor: “You feel bad because you’re depressed all the time.”
Me: “No, I’m depressed because I feel bad all the time.”

Has anyone else had this conversation?

The whole transplant culture seems to be more oriented toward the recipient and the families of deceased donors. If you didn’t have a good recovery after donation, people don’t want to hear about it. I have started to feel better but I really can’t attribute it to any one specific thing.

If you are considering donation, please use the support offered on this site. My wife was supportive of my decision to donate and my employer, Ford Motor Co. was very supportive in giving me the time off and allowing me to collect partial disability pay. I would be interested in hearing from you about any problems that were encountered during your donation experience whether it was legal, financial, job related, family or medical. You are not alone.donoradvocate@hotmail.com