Amy learned of her mother's condition last June when Sandy was diagnosed with advanced kidney failure. Sandy had been anemic for three years, but the news that only 10 percent of her kidney was functioning came as a shock. Dialysis patients are hooked up to a machine which cleans their blood for approximately four hours a day, three days a week. Patients are often exhausted after the treatment. When possible, a kidney transplant is more appealing since, if successful, it allows the recipient to live a longer, more normal life.
Relatives are often good candidates for donation because they share more genetic material.
There are numerous advantages to a living donation by a relative, said Marilyn Leister, a transplant coordinator at Fairview-University Hospital. Living donor donations give doctors more time to determine if the genetic material matches the recipient and allow the recipient time to prepare for the surgery. After doctors determined Sandy was eligible for a kidney transplant, they began to test family members to see if their blood types matched. Sandy's husband and older daughter were both tested, but neither of their blood types matched Sandy's. It was decided Amy would be the most likely candidate, and doctors began to cross-match tissue samples to look for similar genetic material.