It can be hard to ask for help, even in times of great need. We worry about being rejected, relinquishing control, or showing vulnerability. It’s just human nature.
So, imagine asking someone to donate a piece of themselves, literally, to help you. It takes a special kind of courage for patients in need of a transplant to ask friends, family, or the universe at large to donate a kidney or part of their liver to save their life.
But once they take that leap of faith and make The Big Ask, patients are often surprised by how many of their family members, friends, and even strangers are willing to consider the gift of living organ donation.
Many people are familiar with living kidney donation – when a person with two healthy kidneys donates one for transplantation. Fewer have heard of living liver donation. The liver is the only human organ that can regenerate – a donor can donate more than half of their liver, and it will regrow within a few months.
Living donation can spare patients with kidney or liver failure from years of waiting on the transplant list and help them avoid complex treatment such as dialysis. As such, living donation is becoming more common – more than 6,500 living donor transplants were performed in 2021, an increase of 14.2% over the year before.
Each of these lifesaving procedures started with a vulnerable conversation.
Our Living-Donor Kidney and Liver Transplant Program teams have gathered key insights for how to start searching for a living donor and how to initiate your conversations. Along the way, we provide the education, assessments, and support you and your donor need to make comfortable and informed decisions about the transplant process.
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