Would you give away half your liver? Maybe a better way to think about this is — to whom would you give an organ?

I was forced to think about this last night at an event at the University of Minnesota to honor living kidney and liver donors.  One by one people who would be dead now or living with a dialysis machine walked up to the podium to tell their stories. It would be a disservice to them to say they just wanted to say thank you. Because as one liver recipient said,  there are no words big enough or deep enough to express their feelings.  Thank you just doesn’t cut it.

Peter Dimock is the one who said that.   We published a story about him last summer, and you can listen to an audio of his story here.  Peggy Pond, one of his co-workers at the University of Minnesota gave him half her liver. Last year she told Star Tribune reporter Mary Jane Smetanka that one of the reasons she wanted to do it is because she and her husband could not have children. This is one way she could give life, she said.

There were many others. An aunt who described how angry she was when she found out she had kidney disease. She didn’t drink, she never did anything that would have put her at risk. Why me, she said. Then her niece offered to give her a kidney. That changed her, she said.  There was a father who had given his kidney to his father 37 years ago, and who was there with his son who had been given a kidney by his second cousin. Before his son became ill, he said, the two cousins had never even met. There a man who gave a kidney to the choir director at his church. Later she gave him the chance to fulfill a secret wish to sing a duet with her before their congregation.   

It makes you think. Would I give a kidney to a stranger or a co-worker? What if my sister needed it or my husband? Or my child?

It’s a good way to get to know yourself a little better. What would you do?