Kidney donation - weight gain

Thank you for considering being a living kidney donor. There should be more people like you!
The number 25 that you refer to in the first paragraph of your post is BMI? Not sure I’m understanding your question. If you have been accepted to be a living donor you should have a transplant team and coordinator. Could you run this question by that provider?

I have asked my coordinator and they say that no one experiences weight gain but I have seen online that those with BMI equal or greater than 25 will gain weight. Just asking if any one knows of this from personal experience.

My daughter was a living kidney donor. She donated to her grandpa (my father in law). They both gained weight! They both attributed it IV fluids. She lost her weight. He continued to gain, but he was healthier and needed the weight gain. I can ask my daughter if she knows anything about donor weight gain in relation to BMI.

I’ve donated a kidney, and I definitely did not have that experience… I suppose everyone is different. But from my experience, it would have been really hard for me to gain weight because I barely ate in the hospital. You can’t eat or drink immediately after surgery anyway because of the anesthesia. And anesthesia and pain meds have a side effect of nausea so I could barely eat. When I got cleared for food, it was clear liquids. I was in the hospital longer than expected due to a minor complication, so that may have had something to do with it.

I think I lost 10 pounds just in the first two weeks post-surgery because it took a good while for my appetite to bounce back. And while the scars were healing, the more I ate, the more my stomach distended and applied some stretch on the scars, which was uncomfortable. For a whole year I kind of felt like I couldn’t eat as much as I wanted, to the point it was kind of an issue because I couldn’t eat enough.

My situation may have been specific to me, but I think the physical effects that caused my difficulty eating weren’t specific to me.

Donating a kidney was one of the most rewarding things, if not the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I don’t regret it for a minute, but it was also one of the most challenging and painful things I’ve ever done. Looking back, I realize I didn’t have the greatest transplant coordinator nurse and my recipient was at a public hospital, so we just weren’t prepared about what to expect as well as we could have been. I also have chronic pain conditions that weren’t completely manifested then.

I think it’s great you’re trying to get all your concerns addressed and asking questions.