The Amador sibling’s present a speech on organ donation at the Lodi Rotary Club. Both siblings were apart of a coast to coast kidney donor chain

By: Lodi News-Sentinel
September 02, 2009

Talk about First Person documentary! The program this week is on the subject of organ transplant.

Below is some info on Laura Amador our speaker on Thursday. She and her brother, Paul Amador, will be speaking on organ donation (donor chain). As you can see from her info below, she received a kidney just this past June donated by her brother. Together they will address our club.

She said, “My senior year at San Francisco State University (2004) I was diagnosed with Wegener’s Granulomatosis, a rare form of vasculitis. Doctors do not know what brings on the Wegener’s. Typically, this disease affects middle-aged Caucasian males. It’s extremely rare for a young Hispanic female to become ill from this disease.”

“The Wegener’s caused my kidneys to fail; I started dialysis in March of 2005. I had been on dialysis for four years; the waiting list for my blood type is seven to eight years. Nine months ago my brother and I decided to start the paper work for the paired exchange program at UCSF and I received a kidney transplant on June 25.”

To show you just how incredibly dire this disease really is, I have decided to just copy the quote from the medical reference I found on the computer. I won’t translate because some of the terms don’t simply say in a couple of words what they mean. Suffice it to say that the condition seems to affect the entire system by literally killing the kidneys and the lungs in an atmosphere of incredible pain and suffering. Here is the exact quote from the medical book: “The condition in question is an uncommon disorder characterized by necrotizing vasculitis, granulomatous lesions of the entire respiratory tract, and glomerulonephritis. The lesions closely resemble those in polyarteritis nodosa. The symptoms are weakness, malaise, progressive weight loss, purulent rhinitis, sinusitis, polyarthralgia, ulcerations of the nasal septum, signs of severe progressive renal disease, and fever. The disease commonly occurs in mid-adult life. Either sex may be affected. If it is not treated early, death occurs in a matter of months, most often from kidney damage.”

What a blessing it has been for these siblings to be genetically predisposed to the transplant in the first place.

Visit the Amador sibling's blog: http://www.dancefordonors.org/blog
One organ donation could save the lives of eight people,
and tissue donation can enhance the lives of another 50 people

BECOME A DMV ORGAN DONOR TODAY! 
http://www.donatelifecalifornia.org/deltacollege