Donor Considerations

We have been over-inundated with data since Friday. Friday morning I reached out to the transplant coordinator and it's official! My insurance has approved the Doctor's order for a transplant. It was confirmed that I am not a valid candidate for donation which was not surprising news. I happily and quickly settled into my role as advocate on steroids. I ensured that the coordinator ordered the blood work for Logan's first two matching tests for today, Monday, when we were already going to be doing other blood work. I also requested that she schedule the rest of his evaluations for this coming Thursday and Friday. While I won on the blood work, the latter is scheduled for January 26th and 27th.

Immediately following that I called the life donation coordinator. We talked for 30 minutes on what a donor can expect. Below is the criteria and considerations for being a donor. We have had so many people offer to get tested for Logan but after hearing what is involved please read through the below and reach out to me if you still want to donate.

Below are automatic eliminators for all donors:

• Age: First Round (Must be 18-50) Second Round (51-55)
• BMI: <35% :  BMI Calculator
• Blood Type: Logan is O+ so all donors will have to be Type O (Please consider getting testing if you aren't certain)
• If you have or have had: Cancer, CKD, Diabetes, or Hepatitis 
• High Blood Pressure - even if controlled with medication

Process (2-3 weeks):

• Blood Work: Blood Match - has to be O; Tissue type matching
• Only 1 person at a time moves on: CT Scan - where they check the physiology mapping
• Complete Medical Evaluation
• Psycho-Social Evaluation 

Other considerations:

• 2-4 days of healing in the hospital
• 4-6 weeks of recovery at home - Short Term Disability and FMLA may be required. 
• 2-3 weeks after surgery all checkups/follow up appointments are covered by my insurance BUT the remainder of the 2 years worth of followups are from the donor's insurance. 

We are giving you all of this data so that you have as much information as possible to make a decision. After reading this if you are still interested and not eliminated by any of the bullet points listed above please reach out to me one final time to commit to being tested. 

Right now we have Dave, April (my sister), and Jude (my brother) being tested. 

As always thanks for supporting us and we will have a more specific Logan update on Wednesday night.

Ann & Dave.