The Insider's Guide to Living Kidney Donation

The Insider's Guide to Living Kidney Donation: Everything You Need to Know If You Give (or Get) the Greatest Gift offers nontechnical information and practical advice, and the multifaceted guidance that potential and past donors and kidney patients need. The book explains what to expect before and after the donation and helps recipients deal with the often-neglected, nonmedical aspects of their experience.

Deciding to be a living kidney donor, or having a transplant, is much more than a medical decision. It presents emotional, financial, familial, and even social challenges. This book addresses all these aspects with accessible, thorough information and realistic advice that potential donors and kidney patients need.

The book goes beyond providing life-changing information for past and potential kidney donors. It speaks from the heart, and through the authors' experiences. Carol Offen donated to her son, and Betsy Crais received a kidney from a colleague. This book includes their own candid, moving accounts, along with thought-provoking chapters from others who have been personally or professionally involved in this remarkable process.

Living donation is crucial to reducing the typically several-years-long wait for a deceased-donor organ and the tragic loss of life for those who don't get one in time. This book demystifies the live-donation process by providing all the information that anyone needs to make an informed decision.
About the Author: Carol Offen is a writer and editor whose varied career has included turns as a freelance writer for major publications, including Esquire, Vogue, and the International Herald Tribune; an author (Country Music: The Poetry); a book editor; and an editor of health-related materials for a nonprofit research institute. In 2006 she donated her kidney to her adult son and has been passionate about encouraging living donation ever since. She has written numerous articles and blog posts (kidneydonorhelp.com) on the subject and was the lead author of a Patients' Foreword for a recent textbook for transplant professionals, Living Kidney Donation. As a National Kidney Foundation advocate and UNOS Ambassador, she's lobbied members of Congress and state legislators to advance support and protections for living donors and kidney patients. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her husband.Elizabeth (Betsy) Crais is a university professor/researcher in speech and hearing sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she has spent most of her career. Her specialty area is young children with autism spectrum disorder, and she has been widely published both in academic publications and in books for a lay audience. She was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, which runs in her family, in her thirties. In 2004 she received a kidney transplant from a colleague friend. In 2021 she received a kidney-liver transplant from a deceased donor. She has served on patient panels and as a peer mentor. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband.Kenneth A. Andreoni, MD, FACS, is a prominent American transplant surgeon and past president (2013-14) of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).