Tracey, the transplant co-ordinator, also told me I might be
part of a chain of transplants involving eight people…I’m at the beginning of
the chain.
Several months ago I agreed that I would put my name in a
Canadian kidney registry. It’s set up to
help people who need a kidney who are hard to match, broadening their pool of
possible donors. This group meets four
times a year to try to find matches.
The advantage of this type of donation is that I would be
more likely to be part of a chain of donations.
Because I am an anonymous donor and don’t need to receive a kidney for a
family member, the chain does not need to close, and so they are able to create
the chain more easily. My donation can
help to trigger a number of other transplants.
I really debated whether I would go to Toronto to donate. If you’ve read my blog, you know that some of
the reasons why I was willing to donate was because that I knew the surgeon and the hospital in Hamilton from my husband’s time of illness.
I decided that personally I could face going to Toronto and donating
there. But my decision is also about how this will
affect my family. It’s a lot less
stressful for my husband to have me being operated on by a surgeon he has
trusted with his life. The hospital and
the routine in Hamilton are familiar to him and to us there. And it’s closer, just 45 km instead of 100
km away from our home.
So I decided that I want to donate in Hamilton. It just means that they will transport my
kidney to the recipient. I wondered
whether that meant there was a higher risk of rejection, or whether the kidney
would not last as long. But the research
that I did showed that transporting kidneys doesn’t reduce the positive
outcomes in kidney surgeries.
What happens next is that I have to go in for a blood test
next week, where they will do a physical match-up with my blood and the person
who needs my kidney. We match on paper,
but will we match in reality? They put our blood together and analyze what
happens. This is an essential part of
testing our compatability.
It feels sort of like eharmony or Lavalife, or one of those
big on-line dating services, but with a more scientific approach, and a lot
more at stake.
This news has got me wondering all over again who this
person is. Right now they are on
dialysis, and they are hoping for a new lease on life with this
transplant. They are going to get a
blood test the same day as me, and we will meet in a test tube somewhere! And if that works out, we will meet in a much
more intimate way. Intimate and yet
surprisingly distant!