The wait for kidney transplant recipients is often long. About 76% of transplants are done using a kidney from a deceased person, and waiting times of four to five years for a deceased donor kidney are common, according to Anne Paschke, media relations specialist for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a private, nonprofit organization that manages the nation’s organ-transplant system under contract with the federal government.
In Rhode Island, 286 candidates are waiting for a kidney transplant at the state’s transplant hospital, Rhode Island Hospital, Paschke said.
There were a record 24,670 kidney transplants in the United States last year, and the total number of kidney transplants so far this year is slightly ahead of the number at the same point last year, according to Paschke.
Fifty-one kidney transplants were done at Rhode Island Hospital last year; 16 of them were living-donor transplants, Paschke said.
From Jack Perry’s article “For This Cranston Doctor, healing the sick meant donating a kidney,” Providence Journal
Dr. Stephanie Krusz has dedicated her adult life to healing the ill and injured, treating 20 patients a day in a Cranston primary-care practice.
But she went beyond even that high calling on Sept. 7 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston when she gave one of her kidneys to the brother of a close friend.
Krusz’s gift probably saved the life of Glen Rodrigues, a gym owner in Lynn, Massachusetts, who spent two years on dialysis because of kidney failure, including 30 days while he was in a coma after contracting COVID-19.
Dr. Stephanie Krusz
“She is a top doctor. A lot of people say they can’t (become kidney donors) because they don’t have the time. She’s very, very busy. If she can do it, I think anyone can,” Glen Rodrigues’s sister Brenda said of her friend Krusz.
Brenda feared her brother would die. “For him to be alive today, he’s got a purpose,” said Brenda, a Cranston resident. “His story is so unbelievable. It’s about hope and never giving up.”
Krusz and Brenda have been friends for “many years. Thank God I have her,” Brenda said. Both women are runners, and they train together. Brenda shared her brother’s story with Krusz. Glen is a bodybuilder and professional trainer, and his kidney problems were detected in 2013, the result of high blood pressure. By 2019, it became clear he’d need a new kidney, and in October 2020, he went on dialysis, the process of removing waste products and excessive fluid from the blood
On three days each week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday — Glen, 51, spent four hours a day on dialysis. Sundays were the worst, he said, because he’d have gone 48 hours without having his blood cleaned, and the toxins would build up.
“He wasn’t living,” Brenda said. “He was a mess.”
“I didn’t urinate for two years,” Glen said.
“It was a battle,” he said.
Fifteen friends and family members, including his fiancee, Krystal Patch, submitted information to determine if they could provide a matching kidney. All were rejected, for one reason or another.
Recently my poem My Best Friend Leaves the Convent was accepted for publication by the literary magazine Speckled Trout Review, Fall 2022. The editors also featured me in their online preview. You can read my poem and by going to this website. Just click on the link above. I have a chapbook ready for publication, a collection of my poems on my early life as a Sister of Mercy. Sometime within the next year, I’m hoping to publish this chapbook and/or a full length book of my poems.
Reading my poetry at Porter Square Bookstore in Cambridge, MA
Md. woman donated kidney to stranger after seeing request on internet mailing list
Liza Porat glanced at her phone while sitting in her car at a stoplight and saw the request posted on an internet mailing list for her Silver Spring neighborhood. “Needed,” it read, “A kidney for a 41-year-old New York woman.”
Porat, a 57-year-old mother of five and lawyer, drove on, and at the next stoplight, she quickly responded: Sure, she’d be willing to go through dozens of tests and procedures, travel, put her work on hold — at times — and see if she was a match.
So began her months-long process to donate a kidney to a stranger with the help of Chaya Lipschutz, who runs a website called KidneyMitzvah. Despite the Jewish reference in her website, Lipschutz says she helps people of all races and religions. From her apartment in Brooklyn, Lipschutz — a 65-year-old former secretary for a nonprofit — posts notices for kidney and liver patients in need of new organs and success stories of donors who’ve given.
She started her work in 2005 after she donated a kidney to a stranger. With no staff and no budget, Lipschutz uses internet mailing lists and online groups to match donors and recipients. She’s helped about 70 people navigate the donor and recipient process.
“People ask, ‘Can I give you a gift?’” Lipschutz said when she’s able to helpdonors and recipients. “I say, ‘No, no, no.’ When a match goes through, that’s my reward. This is the greatest happiness in the world.”
While there are many organizations and people who try to help link organ donors and recipients, those who’ve worked with Lipschutz said she’s unique: She charges no fees and brings a lot of energy and a caring spirit.
“She’s enthusiastic, and she puts her heart into everything she does,” said Marian Charlton, a clinical manager for a kidney transplant center in New Jersey who’s worked with Lipschutz. “She approaches everything 100 percent, full on.”
Stuart M. Greenstein, a kidney transplant surgeon at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said Lipschutz is “truly passionate” about working with recipients and donors.
“She’s helping other people and not making any money off it,” Greenstein said. “She does it purely because she wants to help.”
Porat says she didn’t know anything about Lipschutz until she spotted the post for Marianna Ilyasova ona Silver Spring neighborhood mailing list.
Ilyasova, a college professor who also has a tax service business, had been suffering with kidney failure for five years and was doing dialysis several times a week. At one point, her health had deteriorated so much that she could hardly urinate. She’d heard about Lipschutz through a friend and asked her to post a message she had
written: “I’m crying day & night & praying to God for him to show me what a day looks like by feeling healthy. I have lost all my strength & can’t even walk without aid.”
She continued, describing multiple health complications from her kidney failure. “Dialysis sucks out all nutrients & minerals from the body,” she wrote. “Every day, getting more critical. I don’t want to die! Please help me!”
Porat read the message. It was her birthday,and her closest childhood friend had recently receiveda newkidney. Porat said she planned to make a donation to a local kosher food bank in honor of her own birthday and in gratitude for her friend’s transplant. But when she read Ilyasova’s plea, she thought, “I can’t overlook this.”
She and Ilyasova went through months of testing to see if they were a match. They underwent transplant surgery in October. After the procedure, they met in person for the first time at the hospital,and Ilyasova cried.
“She saved my life. I thought I was going to die. I was trying to look for a donor and hanging on to the thought that I want to someday be married, become a mom and see my childreIlyasova said. “She helped me save that dream. She’s my angel on Earth.”
They’re both doing well after the surgery.
Porat hopes her tale will encourage others to become kidney donors.
“If I have it in my power to save a life, how do you turn away?” she said. “I couldn’t do that. She’s someone’s kid. … She’s a woman, and she’s a member of the Jewish community, and we’re supposed to look out for each other.”
Marianna Ilyasova of New York, left, after she received a kidney from Liza Porat of Silver Spring (Chaya Lipschultz)
Today is the anniversary of my father’s death. He died in 1968 on Christmas Eve when I was age 21. He had artistic and engineering talent and used these skills in his work in the textile mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Dad designed the silk fabrics that were sent to New York and used to make men’s ties. He loved Christmas and expressed this in some meaningful creation every year. Once we had a full size manger scene on the front lawn. Another year a Santa, sleigh, and reindeer that covered the side of the house. The picture below is the Christmas card Dad created when I was an infant.
The following facts are posted on the National Kidney Foundation website in a sample letter to family and friends
Here’s some basic information about kidney donation:
You only need one kidney to live a healthy, long life.
Most donor surgery is done laparoscopically, meaning through tiny incisions.
The recuperation period is usually fairly quick, generally two weeks.
The cost of your evaluation and surgery will be covered by my insurance The hospital can give you extensive information on this.
You will have a separate team of healthcare professionals to evaluate you as a living donor. Their job is to help you understand the risks and benefits and look out for YOUR best interests.
The following video, Dr. Leigh Anne Dageforde and Organ Donation, is posted on the Mass General Living Donor Program website. It is most informative about the process of kidney donation.
Sometimes, like a child in the dark hiding from an imagined monster in the closet, I feel immobilized by fear of the unknown. As the child is reassured by a parent turning on a light to show a monster-free closet, so am I able to take action once the facts of my situation are revealed.
Life often takes us to unfamiliar places. My journey to find a living donor has certainly taken me by surprise! Sometimes I feel frightened by the unknown aspects of this process, and I welcome the input and support of those who have been through it.
Wrestling with the question of whether to become a donor is also a journey into the unknown. I hope that the information and ongoing posts on my website will offer you some guidance in the decision-making process.
The following video, Donation Myths: True or False, is posted on the kidney registry website www.kidneyregistry.org It has some interesting facts about being a donor.
