https://rantnc.com/2025/06/02/grace-twice-given/ (https://rantnc.com/2025/06/02/grace-twice-given/)
Grace, twice given
Sanford woman one of only a few in the U.S. to become two-time living organ donor
[/size]By Billy Liggett
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[/size]"Why is the question I get most often," says a young woman named Amanda, appearing in a black-and-white YouTube video while a student at Illinois State University. "At 21, donating a kidney to someone you've never met isn't really the norm. But then again, neither am I."Beyond the "blue hair, tattoos and crazy antics," she says in the video, was a young woman passionate about helping others and advocating for living organ donations. At the time, in 2006, she was the country's youngest ever recorded non-directed living kidney donor.Nearly 20 years later, Amanda Salisbury of Sanford has joined another rare list. Since 2000, about 10,000 people in the United States have become a living liver donor — donating a portion of their liver while alive and healthy. Factor in the number of people who have given both a kidney and part of a liver, and that number drops to just under 100. A double living donor. And in both of Salisbury's cases, a two-time "Good Samaritan" donor, meaning she didn't know the person who would benefit from her decision. She shares her story as an advocate for living donations — whether it's a healthy organ or blood, plasma or bone marrow — in hopes of sharing the statistics (it's generally safe for both the donor and the recipient) and the success stories of those who benefit from another's selfless act."I've met so many great people who have benefited from an organ transplant, and you see the way they live life afterward ... they live life to the fullest; they treat other people with respect and they're just so grateful to have this second chance at life," Salisbury says. "And it makes me so much happier that they've all had this opportunity to keep going."Salisbury had just turned 21 when she first heard of the idea of living organ donation. She had given blood a few times while in college, and she liked the thought that her donations could be used to save someone's life. While taking a break from school to refocus on majors and her career, Salisbury did her research and decided on her own to become an anonymous kidney donor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago because of that hospital's success rates for both donors and recipients.She said the experience was "an absolutely phenomenal process, from start to finish." The surgery was performed laparoscopically, with a few small incisions and little scarring, and recovery was a breeze (she jokes she was running 5Ks around the nurses' station the next day). By the end of the week, she was back to volunteering at her local animal shelter and soon re-enrolled to finish her degree at Illinois State. "For me, it wasn't this 'huge' decision," she says. "I was young and otherwise healthy, and I knew that I would be the same living with one kidney. It wasn't going to change the quality of my life in any way. And I just thought that if I needed an organ, I'd want somebody to donate to me. And even more than that, what if the people I love and care about needed a transplant?"According to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, roughly 103,000 men, women and children are currently on the national transplant waiting list. Nearly 48,000 transplants were performed in this country in 2024 — yet, in this country, 13 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant. Every eight minutes, a new person is added to the transplant waiting list. Kidneys are far and away the most common organ in need of transplant. In 2023, of the 46,629 transplant surgeries performed in the U.S., 27,332 of them were kidneys. Liver transplants were second at 10,659. In September of 2024, there were nearly 90,000 people on a kidney transplant waiting list in the U.S.Salisbury chose to donate anonymously, but a few days after her surgery, she was in the clinic waiting room for a follow-up appointment and noticed a young woman, accompanied by her mother, who was there for a follow-up as a kidney recipient. The mother figured out the connection, jumped up and began to cry, asking Salisbury for a hug. The three chatted for 10 minutes or so before their respective appointments, and she never heard from them again."The young woman did get up from her wheelchair for her appointment and shared that it was the first time in a while she'd felt well enough and strong enough to really walk," she says. "So, I never intended to meet her, but that was a pretty big moment. And it solidified the idea that I could really make a difference and that she was going to have a better quality of life."Had she not met the recipient, Salisbury says she liked the idea of giving anonymously, because she never wanted another person to feel like they owed her anything. "I was never a part of their life before this, so I didn't feel like I needed to be a part of it afterwards."Salisbury would go on to graduate from Illinois State and work in sales before becoming a clinical specialist. Also an advocate for animal rescue and adoption, she and her husband Forrest — whom she met after moving to North Carolina — launched Zoomies Funny Farm, a nonprofit animal welfare/rescue organization whose focus is to address the "animal care crisis" in North Carolina and working with animal lovers and other advocates to "foster a better way." This year marked 19 years since Salisbury's first living donation, and she said aside from some abdominal soreness for a few weeks, she'd experienced no negative effects from giving a kidney. She became interested in learning about becoming a double living donor after doing research on liver donations and the potential risks or side effects from such a procedure. In early May, she joined that exclusive list in what turned out to be a much more intense procedure. And unlike her first surgery in 2006, there were complications with her liver donation — a blood vessel was torn during the procedure (unknown at the time), and surgeons had to go back in and fix it. Salisbury lost significant blood between the surgeries (replenished, she happily notes, from blood donated by other people). She ended up spending six days in the hospital, and four weeks later, soreness remained. "It's more invasive, and there's more risk involved," she says. "But I knew that going in. I also know the liver can regenerate to its normal size and function [most of it within six to 12 months]. Knowing all of this, I would do it again." Three years after her initial donation, Salisbury agreed to be filmed for that black-and-white video for Donate Life Illinois. She's since volunteered for the National Kidney Foundation, where she's met many donors and recipients and has seen the benefits on both sides. Her husband, Forrest, has also seen both sides of donating. He had a brother who passed away while he was in high school, but before his death, he was the beneficiary of an anonymous bone marrow transplant that extended his life. Forrest had signed up to be a donor then, but wasn't a match. He knew Amanda had donated a kidney before they met, and when she came to him with the idea of donating a liver, he wasn't going to try to talk her out of it."Her outlook is ... she wants the world to be a better place, and she wants all of us to do better," he says. "And she does this by leading by example. So, no, I wasn't really surprised when she brought it up to me. I gave her my concerns, of course, because it's surgery. But she assured me it would be fine. When we got married, I wanted to support her and everything she wants to do. If she didn't believe in this, she wouldn't do it. It made the decision easy, in that sense."While Amanda will always advocate for living donations, she also wants people to consider becoming donors after death. In North Carolina, more than 5.5 million people are designated as organ donors on their drivers license (out of 8 million drivers). It's a simple check mark that she says still too many people are hesitant to agree to because of what she calls "irrational fears." "Some fear that if they're facing life-saving surgery, a doctor may not put as much effort into saving a life because they know their organs could save other people, and that's just not true," she says. "I mean, if a doctor's goal is to save a life to begin with, why wouldn't he or she save yours?"She also hopes more people consider donating blood or plasma — North Carolina, like many states, has faced a blood shortage in recent years, impacting hospitals during critical times (most recently, during Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state). "Blood donation essentially saved my life," she says. "It's more accessible and feasible, and there's a critical shortage. And maybe if they know their blood is going toward saving a life, it will make them feel better about the process."