By Vita Duva, Correspondent
Jenny Godnick’s experience with organ donation first began when her brother-in-law Steven became ill with kidney disease.
Steven was suffering from a severe form of Scleroderma, a long-term autoimmune disease, and lost his kidney function in March 2010. While Steven was a candidate for a kidney transplant, Ms. Godnick, a Hightstown resident, was not a match for him directly.
In May 2014, Ms. Godnick participated in the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center Kidney Paired Donation program.
According to the Medical Center’s website, KPD is a program that assists donor/recipient pairs who are incompatible with each other to find another donor/recipient with whom they can exchange kidneys to enable a more favorable compatibility and allow a transplant to take place.
“There are more than 120,000 people waiting for a transplant, but one organ donor can save eight lives and one tissue donor can enhance the lives of over 75 people. But, for a variety of medical reasons, less than one percent of people can become organ donors,” said Joe Roth, president and CEO of the NJ Sharing Network, Joe Roth wants shared.
The NJ Sharing Network is a non-profit, organ procurement organization committed to saving and enhancing lives through the miracle of organ and tissue donation and transplantation.
“That is why we encourage everyone to register as an organ and tissue donor and have a conversation about it with his or her family and friends,” Mr. Roth explained of the organization’s mission.
The group’s website goes on to note that approximately one-third of patients that need a kidney transplant who come forward with potential living donors will be incompatible with their donor(s) due to blood type or immune system reactivity against the donor(s). This amounts to a large number of people that need a kidney and have a willing but incompatible donor. Although there are treatment protocols that can try to overcome those incompatibilities, a better option may be to “exchange” donors with someone else who needs a kidney, but who also has an incompatible donor.
“I really knew nothing about organ donation, until I came face-to-face with it,” said Ms. Godnick. “So, I entered the registry, and we waited.”
About a year and a half into the KPD registry, Ms. Godnick became part of a 28-person chain, where 14 people received a kidney transplant. On May 6, 2014, she donated a kidney at NewYork-Presbyterian to a woman named Barbara.
Kidney transplant donors and recipients generally don’t know anything about one another. But by chance, Ms. Godnick happened to have her surgery done in the same hospital as her recipient, and the pair ended up meeting one another.
“I mean . . . how rare is that?” Ms. Godnick said. “Even our families got to meet one another, and sat in the waiting room together. It was a win-win.”
Ever since the fortunate meeting took place, the duo gets together twice a year.
On Aug. 28, 2014, Steven finally received a kidney at the University of Chicago Medical Center from a donor in Baltimore, Md.. He had been on dialysis for four years prior to his kidney transplant taking place.
“While donating is not always for everybody, it is something that people need to be aware of,” Ms. Godnick said. “I only know my outcome, and it was very positive. It was a happy ending.”
The West Windsor native now talks about her experience as a living donor and is a member of NJ Sharing Network’s Team Liberty, a group of transplant recipients, living donors and donor families from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut who compete at the Transplant Games of America to raise awareness of the need for registered organ and tissue donors.
The Transplant Games of America is a multi-sport festival event for individuals who have undergone life-saving transplant surgeries.
“There is something for everybody. It’s just this feel-good event. You meet all kinds of people from across the county, and you come together,” Ms. Godnick said of the games. “I can’t say enough about [NJ Sharing Network] for what they do in organ donation.”
Adding, “I’ve become passionate about making people aware of organ donation. I want people to know what they can do and how they can be involved. And not just in New Jersey, but across the country. The reality is that people die, people live and people have things happen to them. I have learned a lot through this experience,” she said.
Ms. Godnick is an Army Reservist who has worked as a counselor for the past 28 years at Thomas Grover Middle School in West Windsor.
To learn more about organ donation and the NJ Sharing Network, visit www.njsharingnetwork.org.
