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Ask Tildes: are any of you living kidney donors?
I want to donate my kidney (not to anyone in particular, which would make the process far more straightforward), but I need help navigating the bureaucracy. Here are things I have seen about living kidney donation online:
- You can select five people to get priority access to kidneys if they need it (e.g., parents, spouse, kids)
- They will fly you to where you need to go for screening
- They will cover lost wages during recovery
Now I don't know who "they" is, or how to go about getting answers to these questions. Since I'm not tethered to a particular recipient, I can choose wherever to sign up, and I want to make the optimal choice both for myself and the recipient.
If you are a donor, especially an anonymous donor who's navigated this stuff, please reach out.
Are you working with a hospital? They usually work with you and orgs to handle everything.
I was supposed to donate a kidney to a family member, and went through all the testing. The hospital assigned a team to me and they handled everything.
I signed up for the National Marrow Donor Program and was contacted as a match so I've navigated some of this. Due to the difficulty of finding a match, they do a lot to try and make it as easy for the donor as possible.
The program facilitating the donation will often cover costs to the donor like transit, but some of it is state dependent too. Different US states have different laws about how to address lost wages, with some offering tax credits associated with organ donation, so a program would likely encourage you to seek those avenues first. If you don't see it on their sites, you should be able to find it online by searching like "<state> organ donor lost wage reimbursement credit". I would think each program has contact info for further questions too.
In my case, they contacted me and then paid for the follow-up tests. For whatever reason, they ultimately did not take my bone juice though.