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When Yvette Mendez told her father she wanted to give him her
kidney, he was upset. What if one day she faced kidney failure?
What if one of her sons would need her kidney? Gilberto Cruz
told his daughter no. He was 65 years old; he had lived his
life.
 Yvette
told her father this was more than his decision. She, along
with her husband and sons, made the decision. They wanted
Gilberto to see his grandsons get married and meet his
great-grandchildren. “I think what it was, she wants me to be
around forever,” says Gilberto, who accepted his daughter’s
kidney on July 27, 2009.
Gulf Coast Medical Center has one of the shortest waiting
periods in the nation for a deceased donor kidney, says Janice
Levine, Certified Clinical Transplant Supervisor. On average,
recipients wait less than two years. But with a live donor,
recipients do not have to wait. They can even schedule the
transplant.
“By being a donor, you are giving one person back their life,”
Janice says. “But you are doing more, you are freeing up the
space for another on the deceased donor list. You are saving two
people.”
Janice describes the transformation after a kidney transplant as
her joy. She sees life and color creep back into the faces of
dialysis patients. When Gilberto was on dialysis, he went from
210 to 108 pounds. Nearing the anniversary of his transplant,
he’s back up to 162 pounds.
“I’ll tell you what made me do this,” Yvette says. “When my
father came to visit my son in college, he was exhausted just
walking up the dormitory stairs. My father has always been an
energetic man. He built the house I grew up in. He never sat
still. He always had a tool in his hand. To see him so
exhausted, it killed me. He was too young a man to live like
this. I made up my mind. I was doing this.”
For more information about kidney transplantation,
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