Like many other living kidney donors, once Kelly Bryant began considering giving the gift of life to someone else, she had a difficult time getting it out of her head.
She first started thinking about kidney donation because of the influence of a stranger. She loves making handmade cards and follows other card makers through social media. She came across one woman who was waiting for a kidney transplant and posted frequently about what it was like to undergo dialysis.
Around that same time, she saw a story on the news about a couple biking across the country to raise awareness for organ donation.
“That’s when I started to wonder," she said, "Could I do this, too?
“The more I learned about living donation, the more it felt like the right path. My husband and I have always supported causes we care about, but this was different. This was a chance to make a lasting difference — something no monetary donation could match.”
Her fellow crafter ended up finding another donor, but Kelly was still determined to follow through with her testing at the UW Health Transplant Center in Madison, Wis. She decided to become a non-directed donor, meaning that her kidney would go to a recipient somewhere in the United States who was the best medical match for her.
Living kidney voucher program
Kelly also wanted to participate in the voucher program, offered through the National Kidney Registry.
Under this program, she indicated the names of five family members who might possibly need a kidney transplant someday. Because she was donating a kidney now, her donation would give her a “credit” so one of her family members would be able to receive another living donor’s kidney as soon as a match would be found.
“It was certainly very nice to know that they would have a path to a kidney donation, should that be a bridge we had to cross in the future,” said Kelly, who lives in La Valle, Wis., approximately 70 miles northwest of Madison.
Donation day
In spring 2023, Kelly was officially cleared to become a living kidney donor. She received the news that she had a match while in the middle of a round of golf.
“I couldn’t concentrate on my golf game for the rest of the evening because I was so excited!” she said.
Her surgery was on Oct. 12, 2023.
“It was not nearly as bad as I was expecting,” Kelly said. “It was really quite easy. I was in the hospital just one night, and it just wasn’t very long before I was up and about and back in business.”
While Kelly wrote a card (handmade, of course) for her recipient and left it in care of the UW Health Living Donor Program, she has not heard back. That’s OK, she said — she’s glad to know that her kidney is out doing good in the world.
“I just hope they’re doing well,” she said.