(Words are censored because I posted this on Facebook first and pasted here. Posts can be flagged for words like “blood.” It’s dumb lol “Dumb” would have to be censored on Facebook lol I don’t promote censorship, myself.)

Today is #LivingDonorDay !!! 💙💚

Some body parts we can donate while alive are:

1.) B.lood products
2.) A kidney
3.) A portion of our liver
4.) A portion of our pancreas
5.) A lobe of a lung
6.) Our heart, the whole thing (very, very rare for a living person to donate their heart. Only people with lung failure who get a lung transplant can donate their healthy heart, and they will receive a new heart with their new lungs. The deceased donor gives both together. So their heart gets replaced as soon as it’s removed. This is because some lungs function better with their own heart {the lungs’ own heart} or something like that.) Almost no one knows this is a thing. Even organ donor advocates don’t know it. Lol
7.) A part of our intestines
8.) Stem cells/bone marrow

There may be more that I’m not remembering or don’t know about.

Some people are double living organ donors and donate two organs while alive! Usually a kidney and part of the liver. The last I saw, there’s only like less than 300 double living donors in the U.S. since the 80’s. Not 300 a year but 300 ever. So, it’s quite rare. But, it’s more common than people think. Many of them donate a kidney to a stranger and their liver to a different stranger. Some donate first to someone they know, and love the experience so much they donate again but to a stranger.

When we donate a kidney, the remaining kidney will become enlarged to compensate. Some kidney donors have literally the kidney function of someone with two healthy kidneys where doctors can’t tell by test results that they only have one (like mine – my kidney function is so good that it looks like I still have two when my function is tested). And others have a kidney that functions adequately enough but has the function of only one kidney and may look like kidney disease on test results. But, it’s not, it’s just one kidney.

To donate a kidney, we have to have enough kidney function that even when it declines with aging, we’ll still have enough to last for life. Some people have good kidney function but not enough to share. We have to have above average. My kidney function with two kidneys was almost as good as a teenager’s at nearly forty years old! Lol

When we donate a liver lobe, the remaining portion expands to the size of a full liver and is fully functioning. In the recipient, the same happens. The donated portion expands to a full liver size and functions just as well. Someone cannot donate their liver more than once because it doesn’t literally grow back. It’s just the one portion getting larger.

https://registerme.org (sign up to be a deceased organ donor)

https://www.kidneyregistry.com (can sign up to be a living kidney donor here)

https://www.redcross.org (donate b.lood in the U.S.)

https://www.nmdp.org (bone marrow registry)

https://www.matchingdonors.com (like a dating website but instead it’s for people to find their perfect DNA match lol It’s for potential recipients to find a donor or potential donors to find a recipient. Some people wanting to donate to strangers prefer to choose a person instead of donating to whoever is next in the system/on the wait list, which is a random anonymous stranger we may never get to know or may not like)

💚💙🫘

#organdonorssavelives
#donatelife

It’s 4/2 today but will show up as 4/3 because I’m posting this in the evening and too lazy to mess around with it to change it lol.

Xoxo Kim 😘