Organ donation starts chain of giving (LDO Member!)

[Karol]

Organ donation starts chain of giving
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DONOR
Jeffrey Smith, pictured with his wife Karen, is donating a kidney to facilitate a series of related donations.

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:45 am | Updated: 11:30 am, Tue Sep 11, 2012.
by Lynda Hopkins Staff Writer lynda@hbgtrib.com | 0 comments

Pastor’s kidney donation to anonymous stranger will result in seven transplants
Pastor Jeffrey Smith of Windsor’s Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church insists that what he is doing is not a big deal. But by the time this article is printed, the 60-year-old man will be short one kidney, and his organ will have found a home in a complete stranger, whom he will likely never meet.
“Everything is aliases. You don’t see anybody’s names because they’re protective of privacy,” Pastor Smith said.
What Smith does know is that his kidney will be going to a woman in San Diego. And even more importantly, he knows that as a non-directed donor his kidney will kick-start a chain of donations that will lead to seven people receiving kidneys that would otherwise have not been available to them. (‘Non-directed donor’ is the title given to a person donating a kidney to anyone in need, as opposed to the more common type of donor who is donating specifically to or on behalf of a loved one in need.)
“Say your husband wanted to give you a kidney, but he’s not a match.  So you’re an unmatched pair,” explained Smith.
“What happens is they go to the National Kidney Registry, and they say if there was a way for my loved one to get a kidney, I would donate to a stranger. But in order for that to start, there needs to be someone to come along who’s non-directed. That person says, ‘I’ll give to anybody.’ That frees up this person to give to this person… and so on and so forth.”
In this way, Smith’s donation will benefit seven different recipients across the country, even though his kidney will obviously only go to one person. From San Jose, a kidney will be flown to St. Barnabas in New Jersey, and from there, a kidney will head back to UC Davis. Yet another kidney will head back to New Jersey and one will head down to UCLA. The surgeries are carefully timed, and the chain is dependent on all links working: if one recipient, for instance, becomes too sick for a transplant, the whole chain may be called off.
Organ transplants are tricky, with considerable potential for something to go wrong. Smith noted that the concept of a kidney donation chain makes his personal donation worth the risk.
“If I was just giving to one other person, there’s the various things that can happen with that. Even the surgery can go awry and not go right, and sometimes the kidney is rejected pretty soon or maybe something happens to the person. You’d feel bad about the results… but when you’re part of something like this, you’re part of something bigger. Even if something were to happen to the lady, I could have some solace in the fact that I initiated this chain. I helped initiate that chain of transplants, so I was part of something bigger,” Smith said.
It’s an unusual thing to donate a kidney to a complete stranger, for no good reason other than good itself. And for a long time, physicians were suspicious of good Samaritan donations.
“For a while they were reluctant to take non-directed donors, because they were not sure how to deal with them, like ‘Are they in their right minds?’,” Smith said.
“That is a sad commentary on society.”
Smith’s reasons for donating are simple: because he can, and because it will do good. He referenced a bible verse and emphasized one key word.
“The word that sticks out to me is ‘opportunity,’ because not everybody has such an opportunity because of their health. You look around at a congregation… people have health issues that would disqualify them. So I have that opportunity and to me it’s a privilege. That’s the other word that sticks,” Smith said.
In order to qualify for donation, Smith had to undergo rigorous testing: urine analyses, blood tests (14 vials’ worth), a chest X-ray, EKG, EKG stress test, and a CT renal angiogram. He also had to complete interviews with a social worker, a surgeon, and a psychiatrist.
But before he went through all that, he had to pass an even more important test: one involving wife Karen Smith, a registered nurse.
“Initially I brought it up with my wife before I brought it up with my kids. I didn’t want to get them shook up or concerned if there was no reason to. As a Christian I believe that my body belongs to my wife, and my wife’s body belongs to me, so who am I to go giving away part of my body if she wasn’t on board?” Smith said.
“My wife is an RN and she said, it’s a little bit more of a burden to me because I’ve seen the things that can go wrong. She put it this way, I’m not going to say no, because if you want to do this I’m not going to stand in the way. But I’m not going to say do it, because if something goes wrong I don’t want to feel bad. I want you to think about it this way -- if I came to you with the same question, what would you say?”
Husband and wife are approaching the donation as a team, and Karen is taking two weeks off work to be Jeffrey’s personal nurse. He won’t be allowed to drive for two weeks, and won’t be allowed to pick up anything over 10 pounds for six weeks.
But still, he insists it’s no big deal.
“From my spiritual perspective, I’m going to say in the sermon tomorrow [Sunday, September 2] that some people think it’s a big deal, but I don’t… Especially when I stand in front of Jesus’ cross, I mean, that’s a big thing. For me, this is just a small way of saying thank you,” Smith said.
“There’s so much stuff that happens in the world, but it seems to me... if somebody can drop a little rock in the pond, a good rock in the pond, somehow it works its way out into other people’s lives. Random acts of kindness, they call it.”
For more information on kidney donation, visit kidneyregistry.org.

http://www.sonomawest.com/the_windsor_times/news/organ-donation-starts-chain-of-giving/article_8ae5bb36-f781-11e1-bd18-001a4bcf887a.html