I’m pulling for you, Kylie Boardman | Victoria Hugo-Vidal
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in this newspaper about a young Gardiner woman named Kylie Boardman who needs a kidney transplant.
My first thought was “I should get tested to see if I’m a match.” My second thought was “I already donated a kidney and I only have one left.”
Today is the fourth anniversary of my kidney donation surgery. As you can gather, these days it affects my life so little that sometimes I forget I did it. In fact, the other night in bed I was staring at my torso with a flashlight trying to figure out where the third scar from the laparoscopic surgery was and if it had somehow vanished. That’s how much it has faded. (If my wife noticed what I was doing, she didn’t say anything.)
I always assumed that pregnancy and birth would be a lot harder than donating a kidney, where basically all I had to do was show up and a team of specialists took care of everything else and here I am four years out from a nephrectomy and one year out from a baby and can officially, journalistically confirm: yeah, the birth and recovery was way harder.
Birth permanently damaged my body in a way that the kidney removal didn’t. This is just one of the many reasons I get so pissed off when politicians want to force women through pregnancy and childbirth because “a life is at stake” but nobody ever suggests mandating kidney donation even though a dozen people die every day waiting for one. That’s not to say there’s no pain or risk in donation — there is — but let me put it this way: if I could, I would choose to donate a kidney again. I would not choose to get pregnant or give birth again.
I always feel a little weird talking about how I donated a kidney to a stranger; I worry people will think I’m bragging or something. The truth is I didn’t do it for clout or to flex on other people, and I certainly didn’t do it for money (although I admit and disclose here that the Maine Transplant Organization gave me a really nice bathrobe).
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I chose to donate a kidney to a stranger because I looked at the data, weighed the potential risks to myself against the potential benefits to the recipient (another decade or two of life) and decided the numbers added up to making a donation.
You don’t have to be a saint in order to do an altruistic donation; I’m certainly as selfish and crabby as anyone else and possibly more so depending on how much sleep I’ve gotten. (For a full list of my faults, please reach out to my wife, mother or any regular commenter on my articles.) You don’t have to be young or particularly fit. I’m actually in better shape now than I was before I got rid of the kidney. You just have to decide to do it.
I was looking for data on what percentage of living kidney donations are “non-directed” or “altruistic” — i.e., donations to someone the donor doesn’t know. (Personally I think it’s pretty altruistic to donate an organ to someone already you know; I didn’t make up this terminology.) I couldn’t find any solid numbers but the general indication seems to be it’s a small percentage. Which is weird to me, because I consider myself a pretty average person and I did it. Maybe I do have a screw loose after all.
That’s not to say I didn’t benefit from the donation. In addition to the aforementioned bathrobe (terry cloth!), the decision to donate a kidney did wonders for my mental health. First of all, any lingering anxiety I had about doctor’s visits or blood draws got hammered out of me through exposure therapy.
I also felt more confident than ever about my health, because I got a complete workover, inside and out, looking for any potential medical vulnerabilities, and all the medics found was that I snore sometimes.
Most importantly, it helped me heal a bit more from my father’s death. For years, I felt this intractable bit of guilt constantly poking at my mind that I couldn’t save him from his cancer. But I was able to save someone else’s dad. That really did help me move on with my life.
I hope Kylie Boardman gets a kidney. If you’re interested in getting tested to see if you’re a match, you can go to kidney4kylie.com. I hope at least one person reading this considers becoming a kidney donor (living or deceased, honestly, both are good). If I can do it, anyone can do it.
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Tagged: Victoria Hugo-Vidal
