Jen Reeder, a freelance writer living in Durango, Colorado, talks matter-of-factly about donating a kidney to her husband Bryan Fryklund.
“He needed a kidney, and I had an extra,” she told LifeZette. “He is the love of my life. So it wasn’t a hard decision.”
The two met in their sophomore year at Syracuse University back in 1991 and have been together for 23 years. In November, they celebrated their wedding anniversary and on July 20, they will celebrate their fourth “transplant-aversary.”
That’s what they call it — the anniversary of when Reeder donated her kidney to Fryklund.
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“It was a no-brainer for me,” Reeder said. “The diagnosis was scary, but I had the cure. It’s actually empowering to not only save his life, but save his quality of life.”
The alternatives were grim. Fryklund could have been hooked up to a dialysis machine, received a kidney from a cadaver, or been put on a waiting list for a healthy kidney from a live donor. The drawbacks from dialysis were being hooked up to a machine for long periods and feeling ill and tired.
Kidneys from cadavers don’t last as long as ones from living donors. Statistics show that kidneys from living donors usually last nearly twice as long than those from deceased donors.
Kidneys from living donors usually last nearly twice as long than ones from deceased donors.
Being put on a waiting list can take a long time. The National Kidney Foundation says there are currently 101,189 people in the U.S. waiting for kidney transplants.
The median wait time for an individual’s first kidney transplant is 3.6 years and can vary depending on health, compatibility, and availability of organs.
Last year, 17,105 kidney transplants took place in the U.S. Of these, 11,570 came from deceased donors, and 5,535 came from living donors.
Related: Transplants Gain Traction
On average, more than 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list each month. Twelve people die each day while awaiting a life-saving kidney transplant.
Fryklund was lucky. Reeder’s kidney was a match and she had no intention of backing out. Friends and family expressed concern.
“While everyone was supportive,” she said, “they wanted to know if I could still travel, still hike, still ski, and the kicker was, would I live as long?
“The only thing I was told was that I couldn’t do kick box,” Reeder said. “That wasn’t a problem. And did you know that kidney donors live longer than the general public?”
Researchers at Johns Hopkins concluded after a 15-year study that kidney donors live longer than most other people. Another study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that older donors (age 55 and up) don’t have increased risk of death or heart disease.
Reeder attributes this to the amount of testing she went through.
“Doctors are very thorough,” she said. “They want to find healthy donors. I got a clean bill of health. And my life is better since donating a kidney. It’s been amazing to see Bryan get back into mountain biking. He was easily winded before the transplant. He rapidly lost 16 pounds of water he was retaining due to his failing kidneys. And he isn’t yoked to a dialysis machine, so we have freedom to do what we want to do.”
Fryklund works as a vice president of communications for a flood control company, but he and Reeder spend a lot of their free time traveling and hiking in the Rockies with their dog Rio. When Reeder is not working, she devotes time to Rock 1 Kidney, the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization she founded to inspire others to become kidney donors.
Rock 1 Kidney launched in August 2013. People share their donor stories and inspire each other.
“What I love about reading their stories are the messages of courage, hope, love, and giving,” Reeder said. “I spend a lot of time tearing up while I read.”
The site attracts donors from all walks of life. One of her oldest donors is a 72-year-old man.
“There’s a story of a mother of six who donated a kidney to her nephew,” she said. “There was a woman with depression who donated a kidney to a single mom. One woman told a story of how she lost 180 pounds so she could donate her kidney to her brother. It’s all inspiring.”
In addition to the uplifting stories, Rock 1 Kidney allows people to ask questions and get answers from the many resources on the site.
For Reeder, it’s opened her world up to a new community and has brought her closer to her husband. “He even does the dishes every night,” she said.
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