Jody Found a Kidney

Living Donor Facts

• All donors' expenses are paid by the recipient's insurance.
  
• General requirements of living kidney donors are: age 18 to 70, good general health and normal kidney function and anatomy, as determined in the evaluation process.
  
• Conditions that would exclude a person as a living kidney donor: diabetes, certain forms of cancer, intravenous drug use and/or certain infectious diseases, such as AIDS or hepatitis.
  
• When you agree to donate a kidney, you are interviewed and your blood is tested.
  
• If these results prove suitable, you will need to have a medical exam.
  If at any time a test result shows that you do not meet the criteria for donation, the evaluation is stopped.
  
• One of every five potential donors is found not to be suitable for donation.
  
• Although some risks are associated with any major operation, donating one kidney does not pose a major risk to a healthy donor. Studies show that the remaining kidney will continue function normally and will compensate for the loss of the other kidney.
  
• Kidney donation should not restrict or interfere with your lifestyle after full recovery from the surgery. Generally there is no need for any special diet, medication, or change in excercise routine after donation.

Would You like to Help Other People in Need, in the Future? 

In Texas:

• Texas Organ Sharing Alliance, www.txorgansharing.org
• Donate Life Texas, www.donatelifetexas.org
  (More information directly below)
  

Outside of Texas:

• Donate Life America, www.donatelife.net
• United Network for Organ Sharing  www.unos.org

More Information on Donate Life Texas
www.donatelifetexas.org

This is the official state Website where Texans can register to be an organ, tissue and eye donor.

• Find answers to your questions about donation on their website. The fast way to register as a donor.
• Act now to make a life-saving difference.
• Sign up to be on the Texas statewide organ donor registry.
• Tell your family about your decision to donate.
  
• Contrary to popular belief, the information IS NOT stored on your driver's license if you renewed your license prior to 2007.
• Registering on-line, including it in your will AND telling your family your wishes are the means to donate.

• A procedure that allows individuals who wish to give a kidney to someone, but can't because they are incompatible (they have the wrong blood type or their own recipient has immunity to their kidney), to donate on their behalf.
• In paired donation, the donor and recipient are matched with another incompatible donor/recipient pair and the kidneys are exchanged between the pairs.

James Pittman of the North austin Renal Transplant Office, 512-901-2896, is the local contact person. 

All inquiries, questions, offers to donate, test results and anything else related to this, remain totally anonymous. None of this is available to anyone, including the recipient, unless donor gives permission to release this information, or releases it themselves.

Dr. Richard Lewis, MD, of the North Austin Medical Center (NAMC), Jody's Nephrologist and transplant surgeon, is instrumental in bringing "paired organ donation" to our city.

The NAMC will be the second facility in Texas to offer what is being provided by only approximately 40 other hospitals in the nation, through the Paired Donation Network (PDN).

Jody and her sister Kay are the first people in Austin listed to participate.

**There has been recent press about this method of donorship, as noted on the Oct. 25, 2008 episode of Grey’s Anatomy**

Click this link for a legal document to authorize the donation of a body for medical science.

Halachic Organ Donor Society 
http://www.hods.org