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Kidney Donor Athletes
Athlete Archive
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Skip!
At age 44, a friend challenged me to train for a marathon. I was an occasional runner at best and an out-of-shape husband and father of two little ones. I accepted and ran/walked the 2005 Twin Cities Marathon in 4:18. “Never again,“ I said. That...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Michael!
I started running in my late 30’s after moving to a Minneapolis suburb and joining a run club. What started with a half marathon quickly grew to several marathons a year and even full Ironman races. Fortunately, my wife also enjoys running and triathlons...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Greg!
My name is Greg. My wife and I live in Bend, Oregon for nearly 28 years now. I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho. Was never really athletic although I took part in some sports on a very low level. Never really good at anything sports related. I was...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Kristen!
On December 12, 2018, I donated a kidney to a stranger…now, not a stranger as we met the week prior to surgery. (Here is a link to the news story that covered the initial meeting!) My journey began almost a year ago with the interest in becoming a living donor when I...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Janelle!
(If you missed Janelle's first post, read this first!) It took over a year for surgery day to come, but it felt like forever. It took nine months of medical testing, 3 months to schedule the surgery, and then 3 more months to reschedule the surgery. On December 12th,...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Lynn!
A Canadian marathoner and a Texan cowboy walk into a bar. Nope. There’s nowhere easy to start this story, so let’s just start at the beginning. Some of my favourite early memories are running on a sun-dappled trail in Northern Ontario, dodging roots and rocks, little...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Tamara!
My oldest sister went into kidney failure due to medications she was taking to control her blood pressure. After being on dialysis for years they decided that she would need a transplant. She was scared to ask me to even check to see if I could be a donor but of...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Allie!
Hi, my name is Allie Parker, I am a female Pro Wrestler, and Lingerie MMA fighter based in Las Vegas, NV. My brother was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes when he was 9. This changed our family forever, we spent Christmas' and many holidays in the hospital with him....
It Is Official – Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Bobby!
(This is Bobby's third installment here on Kidney Donor Athletes. If you haven't read the first two, click here!) Game time! Seems like I was on the bench forever. It seemed an eternity before it was going to be my turn to get called into the game. The build-up seemed...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Kathryn!
A little over two years ago I stumbled across a post on social media about a local man who was searching for a kidney. He was my blood type, about a decade younger (30 years old) and had been on dialysis for five years. He was also a former cross-country runner and...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Melissa!
I own a CrossFit gym in Beaverton, Oregon and on August 1, 2018, I donated my left kidney to one of my athlete’s 12-year-old son. Neil, the father of my recipient, Bransen (12 years old), aka Boom, has been a member of my CrossFit gym for 6 years. In March of...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Mimi!
My mom became sick in the spring of 2015. Although it is still difficult to say what exactly caused her kidneys to fail, she had the perfect storm of events occur to cause her to become septic in the ICU and in end-stage renal failure. Once my mom started doing better...
Bobby’s Journey – Second Installment!
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? That question we asked as kids or heard as parents. Over and over and over. Well, as my non-directed donor day of January 2, 2019, rapidly approaches, I'm intentionally slowing down to reflect on this and stay in the moment for...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, Randy!
Donating a kidney at age 52 1/2 was a piece of cake, the chocolate kind with three scoops of ice cream, same flavor. On the receiving end was my sister, Nola. We are knocking on the door of thirty years since the big life-changing event for her. Nola had been on...
Meet Kidney Donor Athlete, J’ne!
I donated a kidney on Sept 11, 2018, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. My recipient was an acquaintance that lives in Baltimore with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), a hereditary condition. Her only sibling and only daughter also inherited PKD so need donors as...