Iowa boys step up for Justin, and he steps up for the rest of us

Score one for my home state boys!  Justin Ruddy, the assistant men’s basketball coach of Simpson College in Pella, is in need of a kidney transplant, and Iowa’s collegiate sports community is responding in spades.  This past weekend his friends hosted a charity basketball game in Ruddy’s home town of Fort Dodge, with the ticket proceeds helping [...]

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Meet Cristy

Some living donors become bloggers, like me, and some bloggers become living donors, like Conspicuous Chick, a great writer, rocker girl, and soon to be living kidney donor who’s blogging at http://sirencristy.blogspot.com/.  She’s been talking to the world there since 2002, but now she’s interspersing fun variety content with great posts about her life pre-transplant.  [...]

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Right foot forward, left foot forward, repeat

Hey, America. It’s Liver Life Walk time!  One foot in front of the other at an easy pace, chatting with old friends and new ones and drinking free coffee, for just three miles or less, and voila!  More people are aware of liver disease and the prominence of it, and the American Liver Foundation has [...]

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I heart plush little purple kidneys

My friends showed up with some remarkable gifts in the couple of weeks leading up to my liver donation to my brother. Among the most memorable: My close college girlfriends Jennifer and Colleen brought me a homemade batch of liver-shaped sugar cookies, frosted pink with sprinkles, and a beautiful bracelet Jen made with that spelled out “GREATEST GIFT.”  [...]

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Oops – My other message to ABC News

Turns out that video I sent you to on YouTube below is not the same one I ended up sending in to ABC News for the “Talk Back” feature of their Hopkins documentary series.  I sent the wrong file, but it’s just as well… the one I sent is fine too I suppose.
They have it [...]

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My “talk back” to ABC News: Living donors are not alone!

Last week I posted about ABC News’ call for short video testimonials on organ donation, related to their upcoming Hopkins documentary series that debuts this week.  After shooting no fewer than about 7,250 videos of myself, trying to get the message right, keep it short, hide my double chin, etc., I finally landed on a [...]

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Anatomy of a transplant care coordinator

Living donors, you know a lot about what I’m about to talk about.  Transplant care coordinators, a required mainstay at every transplant program in the country, are an instrumental part of the experience we go through.  They are our gatekeepers, confidants, blood-drawers and needle-pokers, our advocates, weight-measurers and phone call answerers.  They are the ones [...]

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How not to ask for a living donor organ?

By e-card.  Although, in case you thought that method was a right fit for your lifestyle, the irreverant and hopelessly non-politically-correct goofballs at the Web site someecards have come up with one that says it all. (Warning, don’t go there if you’re sensitive to base humor and tongue-in-cheek insults.)

(Thanks for the laugh, Mindy!)

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Diary of a donor, Diary of a recipient

Not sure which I think is cooler:  That living kidney donor Tammy Steele and her kidney recipient, friend Carolyne Bryant, both kept diaries to document their experiences and were willing to open those diaries up to the public; or that the Tacoma News Tribune was willing to excerpt those diaries in the pages of their [...]

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Meet Michael P, Living Kidney Donor

It’s a little hard to take a blogger seriously when he’s staring at you from every post with sticks of celery coming out his nose.  And yet, Michael Podolny has some great entries on his recent living kidney donation that most definitely deserve to be taken seriously! As far as I can see, he started [...]

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