Sara and Kim in St. Croix
While there’s a national shortage of all organs available for transplant, kidneys provide a unique opportunity because a healthy living donor can share one of theirs, sparing patients from waiting for a deceased-donor organ to become available. About 50% of the transplants performed at Children’s involve living donors, usually one of the patient’s parents.
Thanks to improved anti-rejection medications and regimens, graft survival for organs received from unrelated donors is close to that of related living donors. That allows more people to step forward as potential living donors and results in more timely transplants.
A living-donor transplant from her neighbor and former employer, Kim Kirby, enabled Sara Schroeder of Ketchikan, Alaska, to avoid the potentially long wait for a new kidney.
Sara was shocked when she was diagnosed with renal dysplasia — a congenital abnormality in the development of the kidney — in 2004 after undergoing a routine physical needed to apply for a private pilot’s license.
Lacking a suitable related donor, Sara, now 20, was told it might be several years before a deceased-donor kidney would be available.
In the short run, her kidneys were still functioning well enough to get by, but at some point she would likely have to start dialysis. As a high-school senior, the prospect of spending 10 hours a day tethered to a machine — even if it was mostly at night — was unthinkable.
“I’m so grateful I didn’t have to wait too long for my transplant. I still can’t believe that somebody would be willing to give me a part of their body,” she says. “I can’t say thanks enough.”