My Stories--

In 1983, I was a 20-year-old college student, majoring in Spanish, and my dream was to fly to Spain and spend some time there getting to know the people and the culture of that beautiful country. I was scribbling away in my journal on the red-eye flight when a young woman across the aisle passed me a note, asking if she could borrow some paper from my notebook so that she could write a letter to her boyfriend. I gave her a few sheets of paper, but instead of writing her letter, she and I ended up writing notes to each other all night long while the other passengers slept. By the time we landed the next morning, we had become fast friends and she introduced me to her parents and her aunt, who were all traveling together to visit their foreign exchange student who had lived with them in Minnesota the previous year. After a weird series of events (too long of a story to tell here), we found the student and the next day, the little family from MN and the student went on their merry way. The young woman and I had exchanged names and addresses and vowed to keep in touch, but because this was 1983, there was no internet or social media yet, and very few folks had cell phones, so keeping in touch meant expensive long distance calls (I lived in Illinois, she in MN) or letters via the USPS. We wrote a few times, but ultimately lost touch with each other. My trip to Spain was amazing, and every year since 1983 I have commemorated the anniversary of that trip by writing about it on Facebook. I still have my journals from that trip, so the memories of those two months in Spain have remained very fresh for me. Fast forward to 2018. It was the 35th (!!) anniversary of that long-ago trip, and I was getting ready to post my annual memories essay on Facebook, when it occurred to me: I still remember that young woman's name; I wonder if she is on Facebook, too?? I'll tag her in this post, if she is! Well, I searched, I found her, I sent her a friend request, and we re-established contact with each other and began chatting on the phone regularly. It was during one of our chats that she mentioned that she was dying of a liver disease and had just been placed on the transplant list. I was shocked and blurted out, "Oh, no! So you have to wait for someone to die in order for you to receive a liver??" to which she replied that she was actually a good candidate for a living donor's liver. I did not know, prior to that moment, that a person even *COULD* donate a portion of their liver while they were still using it! I told Kari that I wanted to help, and she put me in touch with the Mayo Clinic Transplant folks. Every single test and evaluation (blood work, psychological interview over the phone, etc etc) was green light, green light, green light, until it finally came time for me to actually physically travel to Mayo and get evaluated in person. I arrived there in January of 2019 for a full week of head-to-toe evaluations, and saw Kari again for the first time in 35 years (our reunion was at the Gift of Life House; much hugging and crying ensued). I passed every test and was deemed a good match, and on February 25, 2019, I underwent surgery to donate 65% of my liver to Kari. She is doing AMAZINGLY well, and I recovered so quickly that I often told people that the whole experience was like Serv-Pro: like it never even happened. I had such a good experience, in fact, that I wanted to donate something else. I knew I could not donate another portion of my liver, but my Mayo team assured me that I could donate a kidney, if I wanted to. I thought, well, that's great, but how do I find someone who needs a kidney?? Well, God orchestrated that! A lady in my hometown did a local news story about how she was in desperate need of a kidney, and I saw her story. I cold-called her the next day, told her about my liver donation experience, and we began this kidney donation journey together last May. Again, I was green-lit the whole way through, and we ultimately had surgery scheduled for January 18, 2021... and then, five days before surgery, we were told that we were NOT good physical matches for each other, after all, and surgery was canceled. We were devastated. Ultimately, we registered together in the Paired Kidney Exchange Program, and after several hiccups, we finally had surgery on April 15, 2021: she received a kidney from someone in CA, and my kidney went to someone in NY. Renee and I are bother recovering well, for which I am extremely grateful; my only sadness is that I have no other spare parts to give away, LOL! (I tried to register to be a bone marrow donor, but since I am older than 55, I was rejected.). Sorry for the long stories, Folks, and thanks for reading! #shareyourspare