Help us find a kidney! Give the Gift of Life!

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Last edited Thu May 8, 2014, 05:45 PM - Edit history (1)

My husband is on the kidney transplant list at Penn Transplant and we need help. Usually I am a pretty self reliant person, but this is one of the times I need to ask the universe for assistance. We are looking a kidney donor for him. Or, some help with our Indiegogo campaign to send him to a transplant center with a short wait list.

A kidney preferably of type O but any blood type will do. Our insurance will cover the medical expenses for the donor completely.

My husband doesn’t have any immediate family as they have all died and we don’t have kids. We have one cousin come forward to donate but he doesn’t qualify. My husband would really like to avoid dialysis as he does not have a spleen which means his immune system is compromised. Mortality rates on dialysis are pretty high the older you get. Not having a spleen means that he can't easily withstand infections that will further impair his kidneys.

Given how hard finding a kidney donor is, he is looking to travel to another transplant center for a new kidney. Unfortunately, Penn Transplant has a 5-8 year waiting list for a kidney of blood type O. However, if you go to other transplant centers in Wisconsin, Kentucky, or Tennessee, the wait list is much shorter. He could get his kidney within a year.

When the transplant center calls, he would have 1 hour to decide if he wants a kidney and 3 hours to get there which means taking an air ambulance from Philadelphia. We would have to stay near the transplant center for 6-8 weeks for post op care.

We are doing a campaign on IndieGogo(https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-the-geek-get-a-kidney/x/2127499) to try and raise money for expenses for our donor (if we find one) or for the trip to another transplant center.

What money we do not use from our IndieGogo campaign, we plan on giving to efforts to develop the artificial kidney. There are thousands of people waiting for kidneys. With the epidemic of diabetes, it will only get worse. People are dying every day for a kidney. If an artificial kidney is developed, there will be no wait lists.

Also, we could use help from people who know social media to help us get the word out.
Anybody who lives on Facebook, or twitter, etc. could really help us out a lot. People who use Facebook have a 30% chance of finding a kidney. So your help really matters a lot.

If people would like me to verify information, please let me know and I will be happy to work with the moderators so everyone feels comfortable.