General
Transplant Folklore
May 1, 2025
in General
If you joined us in support groups last night, @Laszlomark joined us for a fascinating conversation on transplantation and folklore. I love how we all brought different parts of ourselves, our backgrounds and our stories to the table and were able to have this really dynamic discussion on the more metaphysical side of transplant.
have you given much thought to the more spiritual/psychological side of transplant/organ donation? And do you think your unique background (cultural, geographical, religious…) influenced how you now view your transplant, and your donor?
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My living donor happens to be very religious and he was confident we would ultimately be a match and that the surgery would be successful. I was raised Catholic but my faith has lapsed over the years. I will say his intense faith made me re-question my own. Things did miraculously go well...we were a match and I'm coming up on 11 years with his kidney this week. Going back to what Laszlo and others said last evening, I do feel a healthy but strong obligation to honor his gift by taking care of my physical and mental health as much as possible.
Do you know which faith your donor follows, and have you had any interest in exploring theirs as opposed to returning to Catholicism? Just as a thought exercise
@Laszlomark My donor is Christian so no major differences really. I was, and continue to be, inspired by his devotion. I'm not sure if you've seen the latest viral clip of former New York Knicks player Nate Robinson discussing his living donor transplant. Faith was a critical part of his overall messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ6W99MPk-M
Interesting!! I had not seen this yet! Thank you
I too grew up catholic and have bounced around with my spiritual journey and have looked at christianity from evangelical christianity as a kid living in georgia while i high school to looking a meditation and buddhism. When i first moved to Kentucky my partner at the time was part of a baptist church. In meeting that community of faith of folks is where I met my living donor. I no longer partake or am involved with that faith. (lots of different reasons) but i am still always appreciative that through my pain with the kidney disease this baptist church did step up and help.
I’ll try to keep this brief - on my deathbed in the ICU I offered YHWH two choices: either heal me and use me, or bring me home to Heaven; He chose the first one. Then, after my combined heart/liver transplants I was kept in a medical coma for 3 days. During that time Yeshua/Jesus visited me, and reassured me that He was looking after me/would protect me. I thought He meant my recovery, but He was referring to a spiritual battle coming my way. The evil one and his cadres came immediately afterwards, and spent 3 days trying to convince me to curse YHWH/God, and reject Him. It was an all out spiritual battle. But, they lost, and left. Yeshua returned, and congratulated me on winning the battle. At that point, the doctors immediately pulled out my intubation tube and woke me up from the coma. For 3 days I couldn’t stop praising YHWH, first 24 hours with no sleep, just praising Him. Since then, it all has remained a reality to me, and influenced this final stage of my life (72 years old).
I hope this blesses you as much as it did me.
DoC (retired physician)
I will say one of the first groups my renal care team told me to approach about my need for a kidney was my Church. Generally speaking, there seems to be very positive engagement and success stories with these close-knit communities. A group like RENEWAL in Brooklyn, NY is certainly the embodiment of this.
I think one of the greatest benefits of religion / faith groups is the construction of community itself that leads toward support networks and instances like meeting a living donor
This is amazing! Thank you for sharing!