By Keith Reid
Record Staff Writer
December 25, 2009
STOCKTON – Laura Amador’s family receives a gift every day they see her. Her energy. Her smile. Her clean bill of health.
In late June, Amador, 27, received a kidney transplant to survive the effects of an autoimmune disease that caused her kidneys to fail. Continue Reading
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
By Doug Caldwell October 14, 2009 Central Valley Business Times
A student at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton and his sister are spearheading a drive to get people to pledge that they will donate their organs for transplants (donor card sign ups). 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.
Melissa Larson watched the rain outside a Harley-Davidson dealership in Elk River, where a silent auction and motorcycle ride were held in June to raise donations to pay her medical bills. But few people showed up on the cold, rainy day. Larson, who suffers from end-stage kidney disease, has daily dialysis as she, her friends and family search for a donor. Medical ethics don’t allow her doctor to help find a donor. Continue Reading
Melissa Larson rests in a chair in a clinic near Big Lake where she underwent dialysis for kidney failure several times a week before she received the equipment that has allowed her to undergo the process at home. Larson has two young children and is a Harley Davidson motorcycle enthusiast. Melissa received a kidney about 12 years ago from her younger brother, Matt, but that organ has since failed and she is in need of another transplant. Continue Reading
A Transplant donor chain that has spread across the country was started when Laura Amador received a kidney from a altruistic donor. Her brother, Paul Amador, then donated his kidney.
Continue Reading
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