A chance encounter with a
photographer in high school led
Audrey Payne to the modeling gi.
He was athletic, agile,
but by 2014 pain began to expere
swelling throughout his body,
shortness of breath and limited mobility.
So I drove myself to GW emergency room.
He was immediately admitted inte
hospital, and after a week of t,
the diagnosis was. End stage renal failure
that means you can die at any p.
The at home dialysis became his
lifeline when doctors approved him for
the United Network for Organ Sharing.
He was #180 out of 100,000
on the national wait list.
He would have been waiting for a
deceased donor kidney and that n
take 5 to 7 to 8 years in this .
So most of the people that
are placed on the wait
list are going to die. Those
deaths, doctor J Keith Milanson says,
occur because there are more
people in need of organ
transplants than there are dono.
He says 100,000 people are on
the national organ donor wait
list and approximately 20,000
will receive a transplant.
The doctor agrees with experts
who say the You Knows transplant
system needs an overhaul,
so 80,000 people that are still on that list.
After the 20,000 transplants are done,
they're going to wait until the next year.
But then there are another 20,000 people
that are going to be added to the list.
Since 2015, the director of the
Transplant Institute of George
Washington Hospital has been on
a mission to reduce patient wait
times and save lives through
living organ transplant donatio.
There's a huge benefit when you get a
live donor compared to a deceased donor,
you take the kidney out of the donor.
And it goes immediately into the recipient
and it starts to work immediate.
We are focusing on trying to ede
that community. You can do this.
You can be the change agent,
you know? We just held
hands before the surgery.
Vanessa Anderson was that change
agent for a sickly, odd Rick afr
being on the wait list for year,
Anderson says while she was talking to him,
a higher power was speaking to .
Some came up and said. Give him a kidney.
And I was like, God, you talking to me?
She had to pass a battery of tests and exams.
Audrick's health insurance compy
paid for all of her medical expenses.
After nine months, she called
one day and says, I just want
you to know I'm a 100% match.
It was actually a blessing for
him and a blessing for me. She
saved my life.
We see it all throughout the community
to increase awareness of live on
donation in the black community.
Milanson teams with transplant recipients.
I'm glad Miss Anderson gave me the gift
of life and donors you don't kn,
who may come to donate to to record podcasts
about their journey with the goo
inspire others to become live organ donors.
It's not just the fact that youe
saving someone's life, You becoe
an exemplar of what people can .
To save other people's lives,
Delia Gonsalves, W USA9
When I was a medical student and a resident,
I saw first hand what efforts le
education can do in a community.
Because as a medical student at
Tulane University in New Orlean,
I saw that African Americans ner
donated their organs after deat.
They were very,
very suspicious of the medical community.
However, with Motep,
the organization founded by Doctor Calendar,
MOTTEP, Minority Organ Tissue
and Transplant Education Progra,
that program went into communit.
He followed basically the civil rights
movement ideas of going into communities
and educating people in the civil rights.
It was about voting for a doctor calendar,
it was about. Organ transplanta.
He educated the community and lt
them know that, hey, if you don,
people in your own community will benefit.
This was very successful, but in short,
there are not enough donors, Ok.
So you have 100,000 people on the list.
Every year we do approximately
20,000 transplants.
That's an 80,000 shortfall.
So 80,000 people that are still on that list.
After the 20,000 transplants are done,
they're going to wait until the next year.
So most of the people that are placed
on the on the wait list waiting for a
deceased donor organ are going to die.
And that's why if you have a grp
of people who are more likely
to get a live donor transplant,
that group is going to get acces
a lot better than a group that's
only waiting for a deceased don.
And that's what's happening to
African Americans in this count.
So if you look at our access for
deceased donors, it's equitable, right?
So African American patients,
just like any other patients in this country,
get great access to deceased donor organs.
As I got trained and I saw the discrepancies,
the disparities,
that's what started to light ths
passion inside of me for what I'm doing
today when I was at Johns Hopki.
Great place, Loved it.
A lot of my good friends are still there.
I used to argue with them and
I think I was correct.
I said, you know,
we have people coming from all over the
world for us to do their transplants.
That's great.
We're the best number one hospil
in the world.
I said, But if you take a brick and throw
it out the front door of Johns Hopkins,
that neighborhood has the
most kidney disease,
just about the most kidney
disease than any place in Ameri.
What are we doing to help that
neighborhood And everyone in the room,
to their credit, they said,
you know, you're right.
You know,
we should be doing more to help
the people right here, right?
And the same thing in DC when
I came to DCI said,
you know,
we need to help the people here
that that needed the most.
And I could see from corporate
medicine that a lot of times it's about
who has the best insurance, rig?
Who has the most money.
So wherever,
whatever city in this country
where you have a high concentran
of African Americans,
you can have a lot more kidney disease.
And that's what you see in the Washington,
DC area.
One of the reasons I wanted to e
to GW was that I wanted to pushd
try to do more transplants in that community.
You looking good,
my man when I first met Mr.
Payne. He was like most of
the patients that I meet.
Unfortunately, he was already
in stage five kidney disease.
There are five stages of kidney
disease when you get to stage 512345,
when you get to stage five,
you're on dialysis.
I had days
where I didn't want to do it,
but if I don't do it,
the toxins build up in your sys.
And then it's harder to do the treatment.
It's very common that our patie,
once we put them on the list and then
they remain on dialysis, that te
is a steady decline in their he.
I did see this with Mr.
Payne as well and very shortly r
I met him, we placed him on the
wait list for a kidney transpla.
The list that he was on,
he would have been waiting
for a deceased donor.
Kidney and that can take 5 to 7o
8 years in this area to receivea
deceased donor kidney transplant. When
I joined I was
180 at the bottom of the
list and then. You move up.
I know the statistics and
what happens to people.
It's not just that people die
before they receive a transplan,
but their health can deteriorate
to a point where we have to take
them off the list so they can't
be on the list because they're
no longer a good enough surgical
candidate to receive a transpla.
So I was over the moon overjoyed when Mrs.
Anderson came forward because.
Because I knew that she would be
a great example to her communit.
Now when I meet people like tha,
I'm always, you know,
fingers crossed that everythings
going to workout because it is y
difficult to jump through all te
hoops and qualify to be a live r
that called him and asked him
how he was doing this and that.
I heard that you need to kidney.
He was like, yeah, something came up and
said give him a kidney and I was like.
God, you talking to me?
And we continued the conversati,
but I did never tell Mister
Payne what I was going through.
And I called him the second day,
Third day came again, give him a kidney.
And I was like, OK, God,
you must be talking to me.
So I said OK, so talking third ,
the 4th day I was like,
how am I tell him this?
So I didn't have the the
nerve or what up to tell him.
So then the 5th day when I spoke to him,
I mean it just came out it just
came out and I told him that
I would give him a kidney and
he was like are you serious?
I say yes I am and he said you can make me
tear up And she went
through nine months of testing and after
nine months she called one day and says.
I just want you to know I'm a 100% match.
It is very difficult to jump through all the
hoops and qualify to be a live donor, Okay.
They have to be in perfect kidney health,
so their kidneys need to be performing
normally, actually better than normal.
Then we look at their lungs.
They have to have good lung function.
They can't have any lung masses.
We look at their heart,
we look at their blood vessels.
We look at their overall health.
They have to be within normal,
the normal limits of weight.
So I believe that what happens t
of times is that a lot of assumptions
are made about black people.
Oh, they they probably all
have high blood pressure.
They're probably all diabetic.
They're probably probably, you ,
and when you have all of these probably the.
The people in charge don't evenh
for a donation like they should, right?
So the first thing we do is
we don't make any assumptions,
#2 is we go above and beyond and
trying to get the people ready.
So sometimes that means even the donor,
the donor may,
they may have high blood pressu,
they may have an issue,
well we work with them.
So by working with.
The donors.
We get a lot of them to actually change
their lifestyles and then become good donors.
11% of African Americans nationy
receive live donors here.
Of the live donors that we do,
46% of our African American recipients
receive our live donor transpla.
Each one of their operations
lasted about 2 1/2 hours.
There was some overlap,
but her operation was about 2 1/2 hours,
His was about 2 1/2 hours.
She was in the hospital only two
days he was in the hospital,
I believe 5 to 6 days.
So the recovery starts right aw.
One of the nicest things about
transplantation is how well
everything goes when it goes we.
So people do very well, Mrs. Anderson.
Really had virtually no complai.
She got up and walking,
if I remember correctly.
I think she was walking by
that evening and like I said,
she was home within two days.
Even when you go home,
you're not back to normal.
It takes about another two to te
weeks to get all the way back to normal.
But you're walking around,
can go to the restaurant by yourself.
You need help with cleaning the house
and cooking meals and that kind of thing.
That's the situation she was in for him.
He was in the hospital about a ,
maybe a little less than a week.
And and did very,
very well.
That's one of the other advantas
of live donation.
If that kidney works right away,
there's no more dialysis and the
patient starts to feel better
immediately because even with
dialysis which keeps people ali,
it's great that it keeps people alive,
but it only does about 15% of wt
a kidney does. I can do some sq.
When I was on dialysis, my skin
was frail and. And dark looking
2-3 days after transplant, my we
said your skin is starting to change,
you starting to look like yours,
you have two kidneys and right now I'm
living with one kidney with no problem.
So if I can do it, anyone else can do it.
She saved my life.
Play Akshay Song.