Over Two Years Out

My mom asked me recently if I had updated my blog lately.  I told her it had been awhile, but I didn't realize just how long until I looked today.  It's been over a year!  Life certainly has returned to totally normal in the 2 years since my kidney donation, but the mission of raising awareness of organ and tissue donation will forever be in my life.

In October I was invited to take part in a ceremony honoring all of the living donors at UW Hospital from the previous two years.  Craig and Sara traveled to Madison that day with Mike and me.  As I looked around the ballroom in that hotel that day, it occurred to me that everyone was there for different reasons.  Some had donated to family members, some to friends, and some to total strangers.  There was even one guy who had donated to his ex-wife!  Talk about sacrifice!  They spoke of donor chains and paired exchanges, of which there were many in this group.  As we each got called up one by one to accept our award the audience applauded every single one of us.  It was truly emotional!  We each received a medal of honor, along with a certificate from Governor Scott Walker thanking us for our donation.  Many recipients were in the audience as well and it struck me that you simply could not tell the donors from the recipients in most cases -- that's how healthy everyone looked!  I again got to see Chris, my transplant coordinator.  Earlier this year I tweeted a picture of Chris and me to UW letting them know what an incredible employee they have in her.  She told me that they recognized her at a department meeting due to my tweet.  I was so glad to hear that!  She deserves it!

The other honor I received this year was my name on the living donors wall at UW Hospital.  It took them awhile to get it up as the wall was being redone.  Just last week my family and I were in Madison and stopped by to take a look at it.  I still get emotional when I read the words that UW has posted on that wall:

I don't tell you about all of these honors to show you what a great thing I did.  Although I am totally honored that UW would choose to do these things for me, I would have donated anyway.  Donating a kidney was one of the most rewarding and humbling things I have ever done.  I know God had it in His plan for me.  

Life has been busy for the past couple of years and I have somewhat neglected my original plan -- that is to speak of my journey to groups who want to hear a great story.  I want to bring awareness to organ and tissue donation, but also bring glory to God for what He did to orchestrate this event.  My work as a donor mentor is very rewarding, but it is done after the donor already made the decision to donate.  We now need more people to make that decision.

Tonight we attended a benefit for Kameron Pryne, an 11 year old boy in our community who is in need of a kidney.  The need for donors is great.  Kids like Kameron and adults like Sara need a chance at a better life.  If you(or your group) want to hear more, please contact me!   

One Year Later...

Well, here I am...one year after donating a kidney.  When people ask, I often say I feel no different now than I did before donating a kidney.  Physically, my life is almost exactly the same.  About the only thing different now is that I think twice before adding salt to a meal.  Oh and also I think often that I should drink more water(maybe this year I will ACTUALLY drink more water!)  But that is about it.  It's as simple as that.  Me with one kidney is the same as me with two kidneys.  And that is the cool thing about living donation.  If I didn't have the physical scars to prove it, I would have a hard time convincing anyone that I had actually done it.

Now, if we are talking about other aspects of my life besides the physical, well those have certainly changed.  I have gained a new sister in Sara -- and a whole new family in all of her relatives and friends!  I have learned so much about organ donation in general and have truly become an advocate for it.  I have found out how much my friends and family care about me with all of their love and support.  And I have been forever blessed.

This coming Friday I am getting a permanent reminder of my journey...a tattoo!  As of this moment I still do not know where on my body the tattoo will be, but I am planning on getting a small cartoon kidney with the date of our surgery, July 21, 2011.  A very talented artist, Dawn Greenwood, will be doing this for me.  I cannot wait!

As I look ahead to the future I know that my goal is to tell my story wherever God opens the door.  My hope is that it will accomplish two things: the first being to share my journey of faith, and the second being to promote organ donation.  I thank God that he has given me this journey.  My life has stayed the same...and my life has forever changed.

Trey's Story

Today Mike, the boys, and I had the opportunity to hand out organ donation information for UW at Golden Sands Speedway, the local race track.  We met up with Trey Schwab, Outreach Director at UW's Organ Procurement Organization.  I had met Trey last month at the Donate Life event I spoke at in Wausau.  When I originally signed up to volunteer for UW, Trey was the one who I corresponded with so we have had several opportunities to chat via email as well.  Today through talking with Trey we found out a little bit about his background.  Trey was an assistant basketball coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves and also Marquette University.  In fact, Mike noticed that Trey was wearing a Final Four ring from the 2002-03 season when Dwayne Wade played for Marquette.  Being a huge basketball fan, Josh was way impressed!  We got busy with our duties today and at one point it started raining hard so our time was cut a little short.  When we got home I realized that I never asked Trey about  his donation story.  I only knew that he was an organ recipient -- but I didn't even know which organ!  I figured since he had been a basketball coach I could likely find his story online.  I Googled his name and was amazed at what I read.  I wanted to update my blog today to give you a brief synopsis of Trey's incredible story.  So here it is:

Trey had the rare lung disorder known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.  Without a double lung transplant he would die.  In February of 2004 Trey got the call that a set of lungs was available for him.  After a very successful lung transplant Trey was in the ICU at UW Hospital.  One day Trey stood up from his bed and realized he just didn't feel right.  He was having trouble breathing.  Doctors soon realized that Trey had a 16 inch blood clot wedged between his pulmonary arteries.  He stopped breathing and the hospital started CPR.  Trey went a full 40 minutes with no pulse while doctors rushed him into the operating room for surgery to remove the clot.  His doctor, Dr. Robert Love, the head of the lung transplant program at UW said that the vast majority of patients would never leave the operating room alive.  But the other thing Dr. Love did was pray, because he says that some things are simply out of doctors' hands.  As you know, since my family spent the day with Trey today, he did indeed survive that day.  Trey had not one, but two miracles -- the first when he received his lungs and the second when he was literally brought back from death.

Every time I hear an organ donation story it amazes me.  My passion continues to be in educating people in what organ donation can do.  We had several people tell us today when we were handing out information that they were not healthy enough to be a donor.  But that is simply untrue in most cases.  Even unhealthy people can often contribute something -- if not organs, perhaps tissue, corneas, skin, or bone.  You would be amazed.

We also worked alongside a man by the name of Steve today.  Steve's daughter tragically died at the age of 21.  In her death, over 40 people received the gift of life.  Incredible.  Simply incredible.  Organ donation works.