Organizations like Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates spend April visiting hospitals and communities to spread the word about organ donation and how to register as a donor. These registered donors wear their badge of honor as a blue heart on their driver’s licenses showing they are willing to help give new life. What many registered donors do not realize, however, is that donations are still possible while the donor is still living.
Such was the case with University of Pikeville men’s basketball coach Kelly Wells. Recipient of not one but two transplants, Kelly received his first transplant from his wife Shawne and his second from his brother-in-law, Brock Walter. Diagnosed with Berger’s disease in college, Wells realized he would need several kidney transplants throughout his life. He said he was a little overwhelmed when he was given the diagnosis but did not let it keep him from living an active life.
“You just have to keep the mindset, ‘I have this, but it’s not going to affect me,’” said Wells.
Wells said the process of transplants changes one’s whole lifestyle, as one’s body spends the rest of its life trying to reject the transplanted organ. Hydration, food intake and strict medications are used to maintain transplanted organs until they are eventually rejected from the body, as was the case with Wells’ transplanted kidney in 2014.
Wells said he was fortunate to have had four family members ready to give him a kidney, as this is not always the case with patients needing organs. Waiting lists for organs leave some patients waiting years for a transplant. An estimated 22 people a day in America die from not receiving a transplant in time, but this waiting list can be drastically shortened through the help of living donors.
While organs and eyes can be donated upon brain death, donations that can be given while alive are kidneys, bone marrow and blood cells as well as parts of the liver, lung, pancreas and intestine.
Just one tissue donation from a living donor can be transplanted into several recipients. Thanks to living donors like Shawne Wells and Brock Walter, their loved one has been given a second chance at life.
“This information is so critical to have,” said Wells. “It doesn’t affect only certain people. It affects everyone. We all have the opportunity to give a second life.”
