Beyond direct donation: what if your friends and family don’t match?

Mayra AlmendarezTransplant News

By Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger  As a living kidney donor, I often hear from people who have recently been diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) or have a relative who is a kidney patient.  These patients have usually been given little information about the advantages of living kidney donation and almost no guidance on how to maximize their chances of finding a donor.  Many providers, who are highly experienced in the medical and surgical …

Searching for a donor – tips that work

Karen HandelmanTransplant News

By Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger  Whenever someone hears my story about becoming an altruistic kidney donor they are astounded. You mean you read about your recipient in the newspaper and you decided to give away a kidney? How random is that? In some ways, the story is even more random that most people realize. I read about a woman who needed a kidney in my local Jewish weekly, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, the last week of …

Living Donor Protection Act

Attending the National Kidney Patient Consumer Roundtable

Mayra AlmendarezTransplant News

A living donor’s perspective Written by Martha Gershun, Guest Blogger In early March I joined the virtual National Kidney Patient Consumer Roundtable, organized by the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), the oldest and largest independent kidney patient organization in the country, to present information to its members on “Timely Issues Impacting Kidney Transplant Patients, Drug Innovation, and Living Organ Donors.” As a living kidney donor and advocate, I was primarily interested in the last …

Television and medicine: patients, donors, and medical professionals respond to new CBS sitcom about living donation

Former StaffDonation Stories, Transplant News

By Erica Ho, Research & Education Associate On November 5th, five million people watched the premiere of a new CBS show about living donation! “B Positive” is a new comedy sitcom following one man’s living donation journey. Drew, a therapist, and single dad, is shocked to find out his kidneys are failing and he’s in urgent need of a transplant. With a rare blood type and lacking friends or family to ask to be his …