There’s a call today for people to be compensated for donating kidneys to drive donation rates. I did it for free.
The report last week of the country’s first prosecution for organ trade exposes the 1591 people in this country awaiting kidney transplants — a number alleviated by only about 300 live donations every year. Grooming people from developing countries for organ transplants is obviously pretty vile, but perhaps understandable if it is the only way to escape the halfway point between life and death that is getting plugged into a dialysis machine for several hours several times a week.
The best way to reduce the number of us tempted to pluck a kidney from a foreigner is to increase the number of live donors in Australia. And the best way for organisations such as the Kidney Foundation to do this is to dispel the mystique of having one of your bits given to another person.
As someone whose left kidney now resides somewhere in the hip region of his younger brother, I have received all sorts of comments on my bravery, my selflessness and the virtue of going through pain to help a sibling. When they hear the story, people gush praise. If someone is hogging the attention at a dinner party, all I need do is bring out the kidney story and no one cares that the other guy just last week was having lunch with the Obamas. “Hey, did you hear, this guy gave a kidney to his brother.”
But, at the risk of ruining for the rest of the donors out there, I’m going to reveal our big secret.
Donating a kidney is no big deal.
When I donated my kidney in 2006, I was the first person at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital to have the organ removed via keyhole surgery. The organ is removed via a small cut in the public region using tools inserted via four small holes in your abdomen.
It is the whisked into another theatre and deposited into the recipient.
The build-up to the operation takes more than six months. Your health — renal and otherwise — are constantly checked, with the frequency of blood tests increasing markedly as you near the operation date. You visit a psychiatrist and your motives are questioned. If it emerges you have been coerced into the operation against your will, a “health problem” will magically appear on your report and you will be disqualified from the procedure.
How does it feel? Any invasive surgery is going to hurt, and no one likes waking up from a general anaesthetic with a catheter emerging from their old chap. But there were people in a lot worse nick in my ward. And I was discharged after three nights in hospital — and in hindsight should have left after two.
I was walking around the park every day as soon as I got back, was back at work in about three weeks and was playing futsal within two months. Long term, I can’t box or play rugby — not that I have ever done either — and should go easy on the Ibuprofen, something I rarely take anyway.
Certainly there are other obstacles for donors. I was lucky enough to be self-employed, therefore could take the considerable amount of time required for testing before the operation, as well as the recovery period afterwards. But if it can throw cash at middle-class families to have kids and steel companies to spew filth into the atmosphere, the federal government can probably afford to alleviate expenses incurred by donors and their employers so people can get time off work to take what seems like several thousand blood tests. The fact the organ recipient can lead a productive, tax-paying life, rather than spending three or four days a week in a dialysis clinic should further justify any outlay.
Taking advantage of low-cost body parts from less-wealthy parts of the world is a nasty side of global trade. But if more people realised it is not such a big deal to be the donor, fewer people would resort to such desperate measures.
If a family member or friend is going through dialysis, maybe get a blood test to see if you are a compatible donor. The pain from the operation will last less than a fortnight, but the feeling you’ve done something pretty damn good for someone else will follow you to the grave.
Well done – a great article. I was donating to a friend about ten years ago, but it fell over at the last hurdle because of complications with the donee, days before the procedure. One of the benefits for the donor is that you get a first rate health check. If I have a regret in life it is that this procedure was not completed.
I hope your article encourages others to consider donating.
Good article, and timely. Reports from friends who recently visited Mexico talk about the massive increase in kidnappings of young people to feed the US demand for body parts. Doubtless this also happens here and will more so in the future as we become fatter and unhealthier as a nation. Time indeed for us all to think about organ donation before and after death.