74
You’ve got 2 kidneys. You generously give one to someone in need.
You have 1 kidney. You now have a single point of failure, where you had redundancy before.
IT guy here, just in case that might have gibt unnoticed.
ah, but[^1] if you donate a kidney you go to the top of the queue
you're losing one when you don't need one, and receiving one when you do
insurance salesman here[^2], just in case that might have gibt unnoticed
[^1]: to the best of my knowledge
[^2]: obviously not
But it won’t be your own kidney and you will have to take drugs to try and stop your body rejecting it.
Source? When they proposed to do this for blood donors, it got shut down in a hurry.
of course they do: they've only got one kidney, so it's more important for them to get a replacement quickly
alright, i was being facetious. a cursory search [says(https://healthmanagement.org/c/icu/news/organ-donors-who-need-kidneys-go-to-top-of-transplant-list) this, but it's the states only, and i have no idea if it's true or not. i imagine not, but i don't know
If you read the articles you linked, you’ll notice some specifically fishy language. Neither one says that donors are promised first dibs, only that they often get it. If it’s not written down, you have nothing if they decide to do it differently.
i know. like i said, i don't believe it
^i^ ^was^ ^just^ ^trying^ ^to^ ^be^ ^funny^ ^:^ ^(^
I'm guessing you didn't manually insert those footnotes, how did you?
lemmy supports two footnote formats
the basic type like so:
comment body here[^1]
[^1]: and the footnote at the very bottom of the comment
or the easy to write type
comment body here^[and the inline footnote]
(note the different locations for the caret)
keep in mind that they don't work on most apps, and some frontends
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
no worries, here's the actual documentation. apparently there's a third syntax that i never use as well
You now have a single point of failure, where you had redundancy before.
On the plus side, someone else gets to continue existing.
Or from the IT perspective: I have two important servers, one has a single drive, the other has RAID mirroring. The drive in the first server fails. I could take a drive out of the server with RAID and have two functional servers or I could keep the second one running on its RAID and have a server with redundancy (that hopefully/might not be needed).
(I'm not going out and donating a kidney though, guess we can say it's because I'm selfish.)
But as OP points out, someone will get that kidney eventually anyway. So the difference is that a different someone else gets to continue existing.
But as OP points out, someone will get that kidney eventually anyway.
OP erroneously thought that but it's not actually correct. The conditions where someone dies but their kidney is viable for a transplant are rare.
Unless you're running RAID 0 (stripe), then you'd lose everything by pulling one of the drives.
I don't recommend using RAID 0 for kidneys.
Counterpoint: If you're an IT guy, you're probably making enough money that you can donate mosquito nets and save tons of lives, and it's not worth risking all that to save one more.
It's actually quite rare for organs to be able to be donated upon death. The donor needs to either be brain dead but clinically alive, or otherwise the organs need to be harvested very rapidly following death or else they will deteriorate past the point of being viable for donation. So, donating a kidney now would ensure it goes to a person in need, whereas being a registered organ donor and hoping the circumstances of your death will facilitate organ donation will give them about a 1% chance of going to someone.
If someone donates a kidney to a stranger and later on something happens and they need a kidney transplant themselves, do they get a bump up the waiting list? I can see an argument for either side.
Nothing said about it either way here but it does state that the risk of later developing kidney disease for living donors is only around 1 in 200, because they're screened for having healthy kidneys. And not all of those who do will require a kidney transplant. So, very low risk eventuality.
I think the waiting list is as much about finding a match as waiting in line? I'd imagine a living donor who themselves needed a donor would have a better chance than most of finding a stranger willing to donate to them. It's the kind of story that tends to hit local, and sometimes national, news. And with many 'stranger' living donors coming forward, it would probably identify many other suitable matches as a result. So, at least you'd get the chance to save many more lives if you were one of the unlucky ones.
That’s a really good point. Thanks for the answer!
They don't. The most important consideration is will the person take care of the donated organ and will the donation have an impact.
To be clear, kidneys need steady and high blood pressure to continue functioning. So let's say you have a heart attack, then your able to recover circulation but your brain was hypoxic and you're later shown to be brain dead. In that case there's also a high chance to be in some state of kidney failure and needing dialysis.
I mean, I only get 65% normal function out of both kidneys pumping at full capacity so giving away one would likely put me down to 33% which is in the "you need dialysis every week if not more often" range. Don't set yourself on fire just because you think you might help someone out for a few years.
Organs aren’t like blood. They can’t be stored until needed. It probably wouldn’t be ethical to arrange the surgery without already being matched to a recipient.
If you live to a ripe old age your 80+ year old kidney probably won't be viable for transplant.
Not a direct answer, but if you’d like to do something now to help someone while you’re still alive (and you’re under 30) you could sign up for bone marrow donation. And of course, give blood as often as you can. Regular blood donors are straight up angels.
Indeed! I do donate blood on the regular, so thank you.
And if anyone reading this is in the UK and would like to also donate blood, you can sign up to do so at the wonderfully named website, blood.co.uk. They will also occasionally send you unintentionally(?) hilarious and sinister messages like, 'The need for blood is rising'.
Good for you! My grandad had some rare blood type that was good for newborn babies (I’m a bit hazy on the details, he’s long dead now) and he gave blood as often as he could as soon as he found out. My mum told me he was a superhero who saved poorly babies when I was a kid and I believed her wholeheartedly!
A kidney donated from a living donor often lasts longer and performs better than a kidney from a deceased donor. Donating a kidney to a stranger can begin a paired donation chain that can result in several people getting kidneys. If you are seriously thinking about donating, I strongly encourage you to do some research with reputable sources, talk to some people who’ve donated themselves, talk it over with your loved ones, and maybe talk to some transplant coordinators at the nearest transplant center. It’s not something to be undertaken lightly, but living donors are saints.
Thanks for the links! I wasn't thinking about it all that seriously (this post is the first time I've mentioned it to anyone) but it's interesting to know that it could do a lot more good than my previous plan of just... waiting till I die.
As far as I can see having only one kidney means you have to take good care of yourself.
Watch what you eat, exercise a lot things like that.
There don't seem to be any major risk. But some people report issues.
It is important to be aware that, although risks across the board are generally very low, every individual is different and it is possible for other uncommon complications to occur. For example, although rare, on-going fatigue and persistent pain have been reported by small numbers of the thousands of living donors.
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
74 points (97.4% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35868 readers
614 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS