Connect
← Return to What is the Living Donor Process Like?
Discussion
What is the Living Donor Process Like?
Transplants | Last Active: Aug 9, 2021 | Replies (119)Comment receiving replies
Just got home this afternoon. While my sister was being evaluated for a stem cell transplant at University of Wisconsin, I was being evaluated for a kidney transplant at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha. Yesterday was the big day. We arrived at the hospital at 6:15 AM, had 11 appointments and left around 4:00 PM. I was scheduled for 6 appointments today, but my transplant coordinator talked to the kidney doctor and explained that I had an echocardiogram and a heart stress test done at Mayo last summer. He looked at the reports from those tests and cancelled my tests at Nebraska Medicine. They then rescheduled my remaining tests for earlier in the day, so we were on our way home by 10:30 AM. The transplant committee meets next Thursday and my transplant coordinator said she would call me on Friday to tell me the results of that meeting. The current wait time for a kidney at Mayo is 3 to 7 years. I have been on Mayo's list for about 1 1/2 years. The current wait time at Nebraska Medicine is 1 to 3 years. Having a living donor would change the wait time to 2 to 4 months instead of years. At this time, to my knowledge, I have no one working on becoming a living donor.
Replies to "Just got home this afternoon. While my sister was being evaluated for a stem cell transplant..."
@marvinjsturing I along with others, are holding positive thoughts for a great report come next Friday. Will Nebraska Medicine transfer your time from Mayo to their facility, placing you higher on the list? You can continue to be double listed. Great to hear they considered your test results from Mayo as current criteria! When will your sister hear her results?
Ginger
@marvinjsturing I am amazed at the difference in the wait times! I thought all of the kidney wait times were longer than that in Nebraska. A relative had a kidney transplant last summer and he had been listed in two locations but it took 4 or 5 years. So will you be listed at both?
I presume that wait times, as with liver transplants, are based on how much the person is in need of the transplant, not on how long they have been listed. I guess all you can do is check the statistics for all of the kidney transplant centers available to you and choose where they have the most success, and the shortest wait times. If you are not familiar with the SRTR.ORG site, it has all of that info.
JK
I received a call from my transplant coordinator at Nebraska Medicine this afternoon. She informed me that the transplant committee has approved placing my name on their transplant list, however I will be inactive at this time. We recently moved and i had to find a new oncologist. One of the first things he did was to order a PET scan. After the scan, he called and told me there were "shadows" in the area of my Whipple surgery. He recommended that I have another PET scan in 3 months. Nebraska Medicine said they wanted to see the results of that scan before they would make me active.
Connect
Praying all goes well for you!