For donors and recipients

You already know the answers people are afraid to ask for.

How much it actually cost. Whether the pain was as bad as expected. What you told your mother. Whether you would do it again. These are the questions that decide whether somebody goes through with it, and they are the questions nobody wants to put to a surgeon.

The most common complaint from transplant programs about public donor campaigns is not that they produce too few enquiries. It is that the people who come forward arrive unprepared — they have not been told what donation involves, what it costs, that they can stop at any point, or that not being a match for the person they hoped to help stopped being a dead end years ago.

A twenty-minute conversation with somebody who has been through it fixes most of that, and no amount of well-written web copy substitutes for it.

What this is not: you are not giving medical advice, not assessing whether anybody would make a suitable donor, and not being paid — for your time or for anything connected to a donation. You are telling somebody what it was like. Their transplant center does the rest, and that is their job rather than yours.

Which are you?

First name

This is the only part of your name that appears publicly.

Last name (optional)

Never published. Only so we know who we are talking to.

Never published. Messages come through us.

Year you donated

City (optional)

State (optional)

A photo (optional)

People are more likely to write to a mentor whose face they can see — but plenty of entries here have none, and that is completely fine. A plain phone photo works better than anything posed.

How did you donate?

This is the thing prospective donors filter on most, because the question underneath it is "did somebody like me do this?"

What are you happy to talk about?

Pick as many as feel relevant. These are the things people are most afraid to ask a doctor.

Your story, in your own words

This is the part people actually read, and the reason somebody will decide to write to you rather than to anyone else. What made you do it, what surprised you, what you would tell somebody who is where you were. A few paragraphs is plenty. Please leave out anything clinical.

0 characters — 80 minimum

Languages other than English (optional)

Worth saying. There are very few Spanish-speaking mentors anywhere.

List me publicly in the mentor directoryUncheck if you would rather help but not be browsable. We will still introduce you to people one to one.

Email me occasional My Kidney Story updates and stories about people who found a donor.A few times a year at most. Never your campaign's private information, never anyone else's, and one click to stop.

I understand what mentoring here does and does not involveMentors share their own experience and nothing else. They do not give medical advice, do not assess whether anyone is a suitable donor, and are never paid — for their time or for anything connected to a donation.

Reviewed by a person before anything appears.