By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
LA Times
October 23, 2009
At 8:25 Thursday morning, Dr. Peter Schulam extracted a healthy kidney from a 60-year-old woman, slipped it into a bowl of sterile ice and wheeled it into the operating room next door. The donor, Nancy Seruto, a San Dimas mother, had never met the recipient, a 67-year-old retired flight attendant from Santa Ana. Continue Reading
By Carolyn Weaver
New York
16 October 2009
“It was like planning for a long vacation.” That’s how Daryl Julich, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says he budgeted for the cost of donating one of his kidneys to a stranger: several weeks’ lost income and a no-expense-paid trip to New York City. Continue Reading
An estimated 62,000 people in the United States have severe kidney failure. To lead a normal life, each needs a new kidney, preferably one transplanted from a healthy living donor. Some are lucky enough to have a family member or friend with a compatible blood type who is willing to donate. But a few will receive a kidney from a complete stranger, an “altruistic donor,” as they’re called, who has decided to undergo surgery to save the life of someone he or she may never know.
Surgeons Erik Finger, left, and Rajinder Singh removed a kidney (shown on monitor) from a living donor during an operation at the University of Minnesota Medical Center-Fairview in Minneapolis. In an adjacent operating room, the organ recipient was prepped and waiting for the kidney.
Altruistic kidney donor, Max Zapata, heard about a woman that needed a kidney so he is donating his. It’s part of the chain of life.