Adam's Journey to Receiving a Kidney

Adam Young was a healthy 38 year old with no underlying health issues until he began feeling tired and fatigued. Once he started to experience vomiting he went to urgent care and was then admitted to the hospital. He was placed on emergency peritoneal dialysis and got diagnosed with IgA Nephropathy, an autoimmune disease that causes kidney inflammation. Following 1,096 days of dialysis from home, he finally was able to receive a kidney transplant in March of 2020. 

Adam networked through his church as an attempt to find a donor, as well as creating signs and magnets for his car to spread the word. After all this effort, an old college fraternity brother reached out willing to undergo all the necessary tests to confirm that he would be able to donate to Adam. After 6 failed attempts at finding a match, Gary’s test results showed that he was close to a perfect donor for Adam. 

Gary was back to exercising only a few weeks post operation, and after around one year, Adam was able to return to the things he loves like golfing. Adam recalls the pure joy and excitement he felt after finally having a Kidney that would support the rest of his body and keep him healthy, and described it as “it was like being plugged back in… I could feel my color returning”. 

One side effect that Adam experienced from dialysis was losing the ability to urinate, so one of his happiest memories from post transplant was walking down the halls of the hospital and not making it to the bathroom in time and peeing his pants which after a year of not being able to urinate, he said “it was the best pee my pants story I’ve ever had”. Adam’s surgery took around 4 hours and was even shorter on Gary’s side. 

After this tremendously hard process, Adam felt the need to help others in the same types of situations. He found Donate Life North West before his procedure and was connected with their programs throughout his process. After his operation he began volunteering there, answering questions for those who needed to undergo transplant surgeries. He also began presenting to different high schools all around Oregon about the details of transplants and the benefits to being a registered donor, as well as correcting common misconceptions about the process. Adam completely suggests that everyone should at least consider registering as a donor, as you could save or improve so many lives. Thank you Adam!