One for the "Animal rights activists don’t care about people!" crowd.
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Via the Lantern Books blog, I learned that author/activist Hillary Rettig – whose book, The Lifelong Activist, I had the pleasure of reviewing a few years back – donated a kidney, unbidden, to a complete stranger.
She details her story over at The GirlieGirl Army, in a humorous post titled “Kidney Karmarama, or… How My Kidney Found Mr. Right”:
What’s the awesomest gift you can give someone? Their life back, right?
That’s what I had been thinking for a while. And so, I had been looking into donating a kidney. From my research I knew that the surgery was really safe (only 2/10,000 fatality rate, lower than for appendectomies), and that you can survive perfectly well with just one kidney. Really what you’re looking at is a bit of inconvenience in exchange for…saving someone’s life.
Sign me up!
My research eventually led me to a popular site called matchingdonors.com, and even though I knew what I was going to find there, I was NOT prepared. It’s like a dating site, except the personal ads are all from people begging you to save their lives by giving them a kidney. So it’s full of messages like:
“I’m 40 years old and want to live to see my kids grow up.”
“I’m 60 years old and hoping to live to attend my grandson’s graduation.”
“I’m 25 years old and just want the chance to live a normal life.”
Heartbreaking doesn’t begin to describe it. Most of these people were on dialysis, where, three times a week, you sit for hours hooked up to a machine that does the kidney-work of filtering out waste from your blood. Dialysis is, at best, a mixed blessing: it keeps you alive, but totally screws up your life and doesn’t even work all that well. Most dialysis patients are weak and sick all the time, and die within a few short years.
Once I saw the matching donors ads, I knew I would have to donate – how can you turn someone away when you’ve seen their face and heard their desperate story? In fact, I wished I had a thousand extra kidneys to donate. But I only had one, so how to choose?
Lots of the people self-identified as animal lovers, with some including photos of themselves with their companion animals in their ads. As a vegan and animal/veg activist I knew I would definitely want to donate to one of them. And then I came across an ad without a picture that included this text:
“I am a retired Veterinarian from Colorado. My wife and I started a no-kill animal shelter 20 years ago to give animals a second chance at life. I would like a second chance too. We have invested everything to help save the animals.”
My kidney starting singing sweet songs of love, having found its dream recipient. His name is Bill Suro, and the shelter he and his wife Nanci started in Denver is called MaxFund. They save sweeties like Millie, a dog who was found in New Mexico with anemia, a fused spine, grossly infected back feet, and (rage alert) BB shots embedded throughout her body. Many shelters would have euthanized her, but at Maxfund she got all the medical help she needed and is now whizzing around in a rollie cart! (See her story here; joyful weeping alert.)
So I called Bill and offered to donate.
Via the Lantern Books blog, I learned that author/activist Hillary Rettig – whose book, The Lifelong Activist, I had the pleasure of reviewing a few years back – donated a kidney, unbidden, to a complete stranger.
She details her story over at The GirlieGirl Army, in a humorous post titled “Kidney Karmarama, or… How My Kidney Found Mr. Right”:
What’s the awesomest gift you can give someone? Their life back, right?
That’s what I had been thinking for a while. And so, I had been looking into donating a kidney. From my research I knew that the surgery was really safe (only 2/10,000 fatality rate, lower than for appendectomies), and that you can survive perfectly well with just one kidney. Really what you’re looking at is a bit of inconvenience in exchange for…saving someone’s life.
Sign me up!
My research eventually led me to a popular site called matchingdonors.com, and even though I knew what I was going to find there, I was NOT prepared. It’s like a dating site, except the personal ads are all from people begging you to save their lives by giving them a kidney. So it’s full of messages like:
“I’m 40 years old and want to live to see my kids grow up.”
“I’m 60 years old and hoping to live to attend my grandson’s graduation.”
“I’m 25 years old and just want the chance to live a normal life.”
Heartbreaking doesn’t begin to describe it. Most of these people were on dialysis, where, three times a week, you sit for hours hooked up to a machine that does the kidney-work of filtering out waste from your blood. Dialysis is, at best, a mixed blessing: it keeps you alive, but totally screws up your life and doesn’t even work all that well. Most dialysis patients are weak and sick all the time, and die within a few short years.
Once I saw the matching donors ads, I knew I would have to donate – how can you turn someone away when you’ve seen their face and heard their desperate story? In fact, I wished I had a thousand extra kidneys to donate. But I only had one, so how to choose?
Lots of the people self-identified as animal lovers, with some including photos of themselves with their companion animals in their ads. As a vegan and animal/veg activist I knew I would definitely want to donate to one of them. And then I came across an ad without a picture that included this text:
“I am a retired Veterinarian from Colorado. My wife and I started a no-kill animal shelter 20 years ago to give animals a second chance at life. I would like a second chance too. We have invested everything to help save the animals.”
My kidney starting singing sweet songs of love, having found its dream recipient. His name is Bill Suro, and the shelter he and his wife Nanci started in Denver is called MaxFund. They save sweeties like Millie, a dog who was found in New Mexico with anemia, a fused spine, grossly infected back feet, and (rage alert) BB shots embedded throughout her body. Many shelters would have euthanized her, but at Maxfund she got all the medical help she needed and is now whizzing around in a rollie cart! (See her story here; joyful weeping alert.)
So I called Bill and offered to donate.