A phone call in June
left me speechless. One of my best friends dropped a bomb on us that at the age of 33, he was being placed on the kidney transplant list. My first instinct was that he could have one of mine and in talking with him, we were the same blood type. He brushed it off that the testing process was just more than simply matching blood type and the likelihood of two complete strangers (genetically) matching. I did it anyway. The donor counselor called me a few days later and asked me what my relation to him was and I simply said that we are good friends. She chuckled and said that I matched better than anyone in his family and was I willing to move forward with the process? Of course, without a doubt and yes. In hindsight, it’s not that shocking that we matched as everyone swears we look like brothers. When we met in graduate school, many people mixed us up and his dad even mistook me for him in a group photo.
It was the greatest honor that I could have in helping him. I would do it over again a million times.
In September, we met collectively with the physicians that performed the procedure and worked on our schedule so that it wouldn’t conflict with anything. We completed the donation on December 11, 2013, and I was out of the hospital on December 13, 2013. It was a smooth surgery and besides a little gas and discomfort for the first couple of days, there have been no complications. The doctors stated that when they implanted the kidney, it immediately started working and filtered about twice as much fluid as expected in the first few hours. I was off work for two weeks and then transitioned back to full time over the next week. Having the surgeries around the holidays and New Year’s made sense because there was some downtime already built into our schedule.
Currently, I am an athletic trainer for multiple sports at a major university and my days are no different than before the surgery. I am able to perform hands on work with all of my athletes without a problem. I was able to return to full workouts for myself about a month after the surgery as well as chasing around two beautiful little girls. My workouts include resistance training, jiu-jitsu and different types of cardio. The newest goal that our group of friends has is to complete a relay race that spans 200 miles. Most people don’t even know that I had the surgery just a few months ago. Except for the guy who has a new kidney and is enjoying life with his wife and beautiful little daughter too.
http://www.freep.com/article/20140513/COL38/305130030/jeff-seidel-michigan-state-trainer-kidney
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