Go to the talk,” my wife insisted. I wasn’t really interested, but went anyway to humor her since she wasn’t able to go at the time. The talk turned out to be fascinating: a personal account of kidney donation delivered by Dr. Tamar Green. Thank G-d for my wife. Three months later, I walked into an operating room to donate my own kidney. Why? Why put myself through the ordeal of surgery, of recovery, of being out of work for a month? I think this can best be answered in the same fashion as President Kennedy when he asked and answered a question about sending a man to the moon: if this was easy, there wouldn’t be any difficulty finding donors. But it isn’t easy, both in qualifying to be a donor and in going through with it.

 

I decided to donate my kidney because I could, not because it was easy. It wasn’t easy. Pain medications don’t work well on me, so I had more pain than most; still, I was able to return to work a month post-surgery. But the end result was to see my recipient at a seuda a year later, healthy and able to enjoy life again after nearly forty years of suffering. I suffered for a mere week to end someone’s lifetime of suffering. I could not have done it without the support of my wife, my rabbi, my company, and Renewal.

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In an added twist, my personal benefit extended far beyond the initial donation.  During a checkup about 6 months afterwards, the doctor found an extremely early tumor in my thyroid; it was essentially undetectable, and would not have been found if not for the donation.  My donating a kidney saved not only the recipient’s life, but my own as well.