These Times

A wool undershirt and a donated kidney

Kirk Ericson | Feb 29, 20240

Two months ago, a plastic freezer bag appeared on our front porch. Inside was a 100% Merino wool, long-sleeve black undershirt, with the tags still attached.

All that was written on the freezer bag was "KIRK" (with the last "K" turned backward), with no hint who it was from. It had to be from someone who knows me well, well enough to know I have an affection for Merino wool, long-sleeve shirts, possessions that come free, the color black, and that I wear a size large. And perhaps the person was aware I like my possessions to have a story behind them, thus the mystery of anonymity.

I proceeded to sleuth, asking a dozen people whether the shirt came from them or whether they could think of who it might be from. Dead ends all. I pursued the backward "K" as being a clue - until I remembered I'm not good at decoding mysteries. I figured the backward "K" was a red herring, or as the kids like to say, a false flag.

It was a hot pursuit for a couple of weeks until my brain decided we should respect our gift-giver's anonymity - or that one of the people I asked had lied to me. Either way, it was time to move on. Then I remembered something.

A friend told me a few years ago that his brother-in-law donated a kidney - anonymously. That means he doesn't know where his kidney went and the person who received it doesn't know where that new kidney came from. The brother-in-law had two kidneys, decided sharing is a good thing, and gave away one of his kidneys.

This is a rare act. According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, 184 of the 5,536 living donor kidney transplants in the U.S. in 2014 were from anonymous donors like Will, my friend's brother-in-law.

Will, 62, a married father of two, lives in Pittsburgh and is a documentary filmmaker and teacher at the University of Pittsburgh. He donated his kidney in 2017.

The practice is so rare that it's beyond the comprehension of many employees in the medicine world. Here's a paragraph from a study in the American Journal of Transplantation. The study is titled "The Living Anonymous Kidney Donor: Lunatic or Saint?"

"At the start of this project, the implementation of a Canadian living anonymous donor program was considered unethical and unlikely ... our medical professionals thought it improbable that we would find individuals who would willingly be LADs, and that any such individuals would likely be psychologically unstable."

Let's explore Will's psychological stability, shall we? We talked Monday.

Question: What was the moment when you started thinking about donating a kidney?

Will: I think I read an article about a wealthy man in or near Philadelphia who donated a kidney. But that must have been many years before I started the process myself. I didn't think, "Oh, I should do that too." I might have thought, "If this guy can do it, then I can too." I didn't have a plan. It just kind of percolated.

Q: Did medical people wonder about your psychological stability?

A: I did have to sit with a psychologist. I didn't get the attitude of "Why are you doing this?" because they want donors, but they did want to make sure I wasn't being pressured or had some dreamy motivation or something like that ... But I think there is a selfish reason for what I did. It had to do with my profession. I make documentary films and when I got into it, I think I had some idea that it would become an agent for social change and as a young man, kind of make an impact. For me, that has not been the case and so, on that broader moral level, I think I kind of failed in my career ... I like teaching, but that's even further removed from the grand visions that I had early on. So, I felt like if I do nothing else in my life of benefit to the world, I'll kind of have this kidney thing in my back pocket.

Q: Did you run into opposition from family members?

A: Skepticism, I guess. It was more like, as I told my wife, "I'm going to do this." Part of that is she would have to take care of me afterward. I wasn't concerned about not making it through the surgery or any complications.

Q: Did you ever come close to backing out?

A: No ... I think what I liked about it was it was pretty passive on my part. I just had to do what they told me to do. It's not like I founded some community organization to help people like me. That takes some initiative.

Q: Do you know what body your kidney ended up in?

A: No. We haven't heard from that person. I thought it would be nice if we did and we kind of joke about it because many kidney recipients don't have a very good lifestyle, which is why their kidneys go bad. This (kidney) might have kept them alive indefinitely or maybe it extended their life only a few years and kept them off dialysis ... but who's to say that people will actually change their lifestyle just because they got a new kidney?

Q: Did you worry that the person getting your kidney was contemptable?

A: No, not really. My wife and I kind of joke about it, but I think the fact that the person did not attempt to contact me and say thank you speaks to their life situation. Maybe they're not the upstanding citizen who would reach out and do that.

Q: Have you had any effects from donating a kidney?

A: Not really. You're sort of aware of it for a year or so. There were these really small incisions in your abdomen and at one point I felt like I had some pain where the kidney once was, and when I reported that during a follow-up, they said that's not possible. So, it might have been like phantom pain. It wasn't extremely painful. It hasn't affected anything I do.

Q: Can you say the donation has had beneficial effects for you?

A: Maybe ... I was told, "You now only have one kidney so take care of it." All the general advice about staying healthy as one gets older, I take seriously. It's a little push. I'm fairly active but I tend to not eat as well as I could. In that way, it's probably been beneficial.

Q: Do you ever think of this: Nature gave us two kidneys so we should share one?

A: That's exactly how I felt. I'm glad you mentioned that. I think that was one of my thoughts. I'm blessed with really good health. And I have two kidneys and only needed one. It was like I was hogging one.

Q: Who are some people you admire?

A: Primo Levi, the Italian writer. He was Jewish and was sent to Auschwitz and wrote a couple of great books about it. My wife and I before we got married were reading a book together. Eleanor Roosevelt was awesome, and Dr. Farmer who started those clinics in Haiti. I like when people are responsive. They see a need and act.

Q: Do you like the idea that you shouldn't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing? That's in the Bible.

A: Yeah. It would spoil giving in some kind of karmic way.

As for my anonymous long-sleeve undershirt gift-giver, wherever you are: I've worn your gift nearly every day. I'm grateful to have a life where someone would do that for me, and that there are at least 184 people like Will in this country. It reminds me how lovely people can be.