By Elizabeth Obreza
BYU nursing student Kristen Bylund spent her summer vacation recuperating from being a “Good Samaritan” kidney donor. “Good Samaritans” are those who donate an organ without knowing the person to whom they are donating it.
On July 3, Bylund of Omaha, Neb. donated one of her kidneys to Candice Lindquist, a Springville mother of three. The pair first met the day before the operation at LDS Hospital.
“Meeting Candice was one of the greatest moments of my life,” Bylund said. “We hugged like we were long lost relatives. “The Spirit was really strong that day.”
Lindquist said she was diagnosed with a polycystic kidney disease 17 years ago. She had her second kidney removed in February after she found a donor to replace it. Unfortunately, the donor”s unforeseen health complications prevented him from proceeding with the donation.
With paired exchange organ donation, however, Lindquist received a kidney in five and a half months instead of the average two and a half years for those in the Intermountain West region.
Two donor-recipient pairs participate in the paired organ exchange process. The United Network of Organ Sharing guidelines give hope to anyone wanting but unable to donate an organ to his or her loved one. Donating an organ to a compatible recipient allows the donor”s loved one to the top of the list.
In this case, Gigi Allred of Orem wanted to donate her kidney to her sister, Lindquist, but was unable to because their incompatible blood and tissue types. Thanks to the UNOS donation guidelines, Allred was able to ensure her sister would receive a kidney by donating her own kidney to a recipient with whom she was compatible. This recipient was Jennifer Morrison of Tooele, who had spent nearly two years on dialysis waiting for a kidney. Bylund donated her kidney to Lindquist, who had been moved to the top of the recipient list.
This paired exchange was the first of its kind in Utah and perhaps one of the first in the western United States, said Kristie Baker, LDS Hospital”s kidney transplant coordinator.
Baker said paired exchanges also help those waiting to receive kidney transplants by taking two recipients off the list and making it easier for two other recipients to receive kidneys.
Bylund only learned about the paired exchange procedure days before her donation, but she had considered organ donation for almost two years before donating.
Before serving her mission in Berlin, Germany, Bylund learned about the process of live organ donation in a BYU course called Nursing Ethics. Though the presentation impressed Bylund to consider live organ donation, she postponed further investigation because she had already submitted her mission papers.
Toward the end of her mission, Bylund said she kept remembering the presentation that touched her in her Nursing Ethics class.
“The strongest prompting of my mission was to consider organ donation,” Bylund said.
Bylund also wanted to donate because she had never had surgery before and wanted to have more empathy for the patients she would serve as a nurse, she said.
“My whole family loves her to death,” Lindquist said. “She saved my life.”
Organ donation is also a life-hanging experience for the donor.
“Kidney donation is a very unselfish act,” Baker said. “It is one of the few times you can impact a person so strongly.”
Though only 30 kidney donors in the past several years have been classified as “Good Samaritan” donors, Baker said that there are many donors who could be considered “Good Samaritans” because of their distant relationship with their recipients.
Baker said that after three to five days in the hospital, a donor should expect recovery to take four to six weeks. Bylund said that within that time she, Lindquist and Lindquist”s family participated in a 5K run in support of kidney donation.
“You should never to do it without a lot of consideration, prayer and medical assurance,” Bylund said. “If you do it out of love and desire to serve it will be a great experience.”
For more information about kidney donation, see www.yesutah.org or www.unos.org.
