Liz Young shares her story about donating a kidney.
My journey of
donating a kidney
How I rolled into organ donation,
and will continue to ride through life with an even bigger smile!
I created this blog for the purpose of sharing my experience of becoming a Living Donor,
and hopefully inspiring others to consider organ or tissue donation.
So who or what is a Living Donor?
This term is used to describe a living person donating one of their kidneys to someone whose kidneys are no longer functioning properly. The donated kidney is surgically removed from the living donor and transplanted into the recipient.
My organ donation process began in early 2022, and July 11 is when I donated a kidney. Explore my stories, and I hope I can either inspire, spark some excitement in your life, or just give you good laugh. So, sit back, relax and read on.
Did you know?
13 people die each day while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant.
It is very rewarding to know that after my surgery, one less person died!
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Over 100,000 people are in need of a kidney transplant.
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Every 9 minutes another patient is added to the national transplant waiting list.
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Over 3,000 patients are added to the kidney waiting list each month.
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The average wait time for an individual’s first kidney transplant is 3.6 years and can vary depending on health, compatibility and availability of organs.
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Roughly 6,000 people donate their kidney every year. 🙌🏽
Less than 5% of those 6,000 living kidney donors donate to someone that they do not know. I am the type of donor known as a non-directed/altruistic donor. I did not know of anyone in need of a kidney,
so my kidney went to a person on the National Kidney Registry.
Less than 1% of the population completes an Ironman in their life time. I have never been good at math, so if I'm an 8x Ironman finisher, maybe I'm in the 0.8% of the population. Add that to being a non-directed donor,
I'm estimating I might just be in the 0.007% of the population?
Data collected from
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Unos.org
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Kidney.org
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Pennmedicine.org
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UCHealth.org
Let's Connect!
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