in the news

Ever since I've made this decision, it seems like kidney donation is everywhere in the news. Just look at George Lopez, Steven Cojocaru, the St. Louis series and a story that ran in the Chronicle a couple weeks ago, "The One-Kidney Club."

I've come to realize that this procedure happens a lot more often than I previously thought. It puts me among many people who know what I'm going through.

I've consulted with livingdonorsonline.org a lot during the past couple of months. It's a free message board where people who have or are thinking about donating organs to loved ones or anonymously. They've helped me tremendously.

defying death

Something that surprises me is that I'm not too nervous about this procedure being done on me. I think it comes in phases. When I was first debating this back in December, the thought of the surgery scared me to death. The statistics for death because of the donation is very low, something like 3 to 10,000.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a very good (but disturbing) series about living kidney donation last month. I read it a week before I flew to Phoenix for my testing. The stories talked about how some people feel they are not educated on the risks of the surgery before they agree to donate. Some have ended up in comas and died, while others have needed their own kidney donation years down the line.

show me the money

One thing that I will be doing in the next few weeks is raising money for travel, lodging and lost wages for the surgery. I plan on doing some fund-raisers in the next few weeks, although I really need to get out and actually do something about it. I'm going to write letters to friends and family, hold a bake sale/pancake brunch at my house, and possibly solicit a restaurant to donate a portion of the daily sales.

Currently my cousin and my dad are working on getting flights arranged for myself, my boyfriend, my parents and (hopefully) my brothers. I will be flying from Atlanta to Phoenix, and then to either Sioux City or Omaha (whatever's cheapest), and then back to Atlanta. (I'm not even going to try to get a flight out of Augusta ... way to expensive.) I will have to be on the same flight as my parents when I leave Phoenix because they are my caretakers and I probably will be in great need of assistance; but Annie said it took a while before travel agents could actually get that through their skulls (they had originally wanted to put me on a different flight than my folks). I'm going to call my cousin tomorrow and see what the status of the flights are.

dealing with family

I've always been a lot like my dad -- we're both risk-takers, adventurous, optimistic and generous. Throughout this whole ordeal, he has been behind me 100 percent and believes I will be all right. My mom, on the other hand, is more cautious and pessimistic.

The idea that I will be sacrificing a kidney to a cousin I hardly know has been really tough for her. When I went to get tested in May at Mayo, my parents came with me to meet my social worker. I told Ms. Wickner that my mom was very against it, and at that moment my mom burst into tears. Ms. Wickner said that it was OK, that this is a huge surgery and it needs to be discussed. But my mom didn't want to hear anymore and she left the room. Then, of course, I started to cry. It wasn't that I was upset with my mom, it's just in my mom and I's genes: We call it the Carney curse (Carney is my grandma's maiden name and she cames from a very Irish family) ... if we see someone crying, the tears will start flowing.

poked and prodded

They don't just let anyone donate a kidney. It's a long process that you have to follow, in which doctors look for any possible reason to exclude you from donating. They're not trying to make the donation process difficult, they're just making sure you're not putting your life at risk to save another.

In April, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., called me and asked me several questions about my personal background and health. After that, they sent a kit of about seven or eight vials that I needed to fill with my blood at a doctor's office or laboratory. That is a story in itself. To make a long story short, I thought I had to fast for the blood test (I actually did not have to) and it took a little more than an hour to fill all of the vials. I nearly passed out the first time they stuck me (I hadn't drank any water either), and between walking and food breaks, I was stuck in four other places. Needless to say my hands and toes were pretty blue afterward, and it didn't help that days later I looked like a major drug addict from all the track marks.

the whole story

Hello Augusta,

I never knew up until a few months ago I could make such a big difference in someone's life. Someone who I am just getting to know. That someone is my cousin, who is in desperate need of a kidney, and I just happen to be a really good match.

Our story goes like this: I grew up in Iowa, and Annie grew up in Arizona. The first time I remember seeing her is at a family reunion in Des Moines (I think) when I was in eighth grade. I think she had either just married her husband, Kendall, or was on the verge of marrying him. Anyway, we didn't talk much because I was a shy 14-year-old and she seemed much older than me (she's six years older) and plus we just met. The next time I saw her was at her father's funeral in Waterloo, Iowa, when I was a senior in high school. It was a really rough time for her and her sister, Jennifer, so I kind of stayed away.