KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV/Gray News) – Two best friends in Kansas have been further connected through a life-changing ordeal involving six other people.
April Nuessen and Susan Brough have been friends their entire lives.
“I don’t really have any childhood memories that don’t include you,” Brough said to Nuessen. “We used to fight over rocks when we were kids.”
Nuessen agreed, saying she had spent a lot of time at Brough’s house.
“I mean we fought like sisters,” she said.
Three years ago, Nuessen was put on dialysis and on the kidney transplant list.
With her friend in need of a kidney, Brough said it was never a second thought to donate one of hers.
“I didn’t even really discuss it with my husband,” Brough said. “I said, ‘I hope you’re on board with this,’ and he said he couldn’t be more proud of you for wanting to do this. Thinking that there might be something that happens to her and she is not in my life, that was unbearable just to think about.”
Then they discovered Brough wasn’t a match.
The University of Kansas Health System asked the two if they were interested in being part of a living donor chain.
“Of course, Susan was like, ‘Absolutely, whatever is going to get her a kidney I will do,’” Nuessen said. “The rest is history.”
On average, one person is added to the national kidney transplant list every 10 minutes.
Living kidney donor chains are a way to increase the number of available organs for transplant.
The chains are created when someone altruistically donates a kidney with no recipient in mind or when someone wants to donate to a friend or family member and is not a match, but still wants to donate.
Dr. Sean Kumer is the Chief Medical Officer for the Kansas City division of the University of Kansas Health System and a transplant surgeon. He is usually the donor surgeon in organ transplant surgeries and was Brough’s surgeon.
“There are a lot of pluses to living kidney donations,” Kumer said. “On average, these kidneys last three to five years longer than the average deceased donor kidney. It turns a middle of the night operation into an elective operation so there is a recipient that knows, ‘I am getting off dialysis tomorrow at this time’ or prevents them from going on dialysis. It’s an everyday miracle.”
Both Brough and Nuessen underwent their successful surgeries and are now recovering.
There are six other people in this specific donor chain, four recipients and four donors.
The experience has left the two friends wanting to raise awareness on living organ donations.
“It can save somebody’s life and may even create this chain effect where you are saving multiple people’s lives,” Nuessen said.
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