MADISON, Wis. — In the last 55 years, UW Health’s living kidney donor program has seen more than 4,000 life-changing transplants. But while losing a kidney may seem like it would take a significant toll on your body, a group of living donors are out to prove giving up an organ to save another’s life doesn’t mean your life has to change at all.
“We are shipping kidneys all over the country, we are getting kidneys from all over the country, making magic happen, really,” said Scot Johnson, living donation program manager at UW Health’s Transplant Center.
Many of those donations are between loved ones, but you actually don’t even need to know the person that will get your kidney in order to donate. Many donors choose to donate their organ to a complete stranger that they may never even know.
“I went into it understanding that I might never know who received it,” said living kidney donor Taylor Duke. “She could have chosen to never know me, and that would have been okay with me.”
Duke has spent the last nine years working in healthcare as an army medic and a civilian. She first learned about living donation when she was working at Meriter Hospital in Madison.