January 10, 2010
Sisters team to match kidney donors with recipientsSwapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
svenugop@lohud.com
PLEASANTVILLE Danny Flood celebrated the first anniversary of his "second lease on life" by taking in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular with his 4-year-old granddaughter, Meredith Julia, last month.
"Everything is absolutely fantastic," said Flood, 69, who received a kidney transplant from a 48-year-old woman in December 2008. "It's put everything in perspective. I try to live one day at a time and be a good person."
The 37-year Pleasantville resident's search for a kidney made national news last year when his three daughters found a donor via the Craigslist Web site.
The sisters Heather, Cynthia and Jennifer spent more than a year continually reposting the advertisement on Craigslist which expired every seven days and fielding more than 100 calls from potential donors before finally finding a match.
That experience inspired them to start The Flood Sisters' Kidney Foundation of America to spread awareness of the alternative ways people can find "altruistic," or unrelated, living organ donors without going through the national waiting list.
For a $360 annual membership fee, the foundation's Web site www.floodsisters.org puts donors and seekers in touch with one another and educates people on living donor transplants.
Last July, just months after incorporating their nonprofit foundation, they successfully matched their first recipient with a donor.
New Jersey resident Jim Collis, a 50-year-old former police sergeant who was forced to retire when kidney disease required him to undergo dialysis, received a kidney transplant from a 37-year-old woman from New Hampshire that month.
"I had been on the national waiting list for almost two years by then," Collis said. "People have to seek out alternate methods. If it hadn't been for the Flood Sisters' Web site, who knows where I would be."
As of Dec. 11, 88,453 people were waiting for a kidney transplant, with an average wait time of five years, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit organization that administers the country's only Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, established by Congress in 1984.
In 2000, for the first time, transplants from living donors exceeded those from cadavers, according to statistics available from the network.
Bioethicists have long remained skeptical of the rise in living donations facilitated by the Internet. They fear the practice could create an underground market for organs that people with money can utilize.
"We do get calls from people asking if there are any payments involved, and we tell them up front that it is illegal to do so,"said Jennifer Flood, 31, the foundation's president.
The foundation currently has a database of 39 patients and 33 potential living donors. So far, two transplant surgeries have been facilitated by the foundation and a third is scheduled for later this month.
"Just goes to show you that there are a lot of good people out there," said Danny Flood's wife, Roseann.
Next month, the foundation will host a fundraiser at the Broad Street Ballroom in Manhattan. Details are still being worked out.
"It's been a very rewarding experience and we believe we are helping save lives," said Jennifer Flood.
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20101100307
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