Lindsey Rohloff remembers the exact moment when she heard the kidney she had received from her father no longer worked—she was working at a dialysis center, about to put some lab samples in the centrifuge.
“It was one of the worst feelings ever,” she said. “I remember just falling to the ground and sobbing. My coworkers and boss were there to comfort me, but I knew what I would have to go through again—only this time, it was with two young kids and a mortgage.”
Lindsey was just 16 when she received her first living donor kidney transplant in 2004. Researchers say that the average transplanted kidney usually lasts around 10 years, and in 2018, she learned that her body was rejecting the organ. So, she went back on dialysis to clear her body of the waste that her kidney was no longer filtering out.
Lindsey’s transplant coordinator at UW Health put her back on the transplant wait list, but in the meantime, she suggested that Lindsey should put a post on Facebook to see if she could find a living donor.
After a short time, Lindsey’s coordinator requested that she take the post down because she was receiving too many calls from people who wanted to undergo testing as a potential kidney donor. “I never ever would have expected that,” said Lindsey.
Ultimately, Lindsey’s mother qualified as her second kidney donor, but she had antibodies that weren’t compatible with Lindsey. So, they became part of a six-way kidney exchange—three donors and three recipients.
Lindsey’s mother gave her the gift of life in May 2018. Several months later, Lindsey connected through UW Organ and Tissue Donation with the woman who gave her a kidney, Kay Louisson. Kay, who lives in Marin County, California, had donated on behalf of her good friend Barb.
Barb’s husband, Mario, and Lindsey’s husband, Nick, organized a meeting between the women involved, and at the beginning of 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic), Lindsey traveled to California to meet the woman whose kidney was in her body.
“We just clicked so well together,” said Lindsey. “She is the kindest and most selfless person ever imaginable. There’s no way I could thank her for what she’s done for me.”
Over the past six years, the two women have remained close, exchanging near-constant texts and visiting occasionally. In January 2025, they set off on their biggest adventure yet: a trip to New Zealand. Kay grew up there, and her mother, Joy, had passed away a year and a half ago. Joy had told Kay not to rush home if she was passing, because it was too far away and would be stressful.
“But I wanted to visit where she was buried,” Kay said. “And I had this bee in my bonnet that I wanted to be ‘all of me’ in front of the plot. I called Lindsey and said, ‘I think you’re a part of this journey.’”
The women flew to New Zealand in mid-January and spent two weeks traveling around Kay’s hometown and other parts of the country. “I wanted Lindsey to see where her kidney grew up,” said Kay.
For her part, Lindsey loves the new relationship she has built with her kidney donor—which has gotten her through some rough times in recent years. “She made me believe in myself again,” she said.