We are Lis and Cece, mother and daughter, recipient and donor, Samie and Samie.
Why "Samie," you might ask?
We were always very close but on March 20, 2012, I (Cece) donated my left kidney to my mom (Lis) in order to drastically improve her quality of life and free her from almost daily in-home dialysis.
The path to dialysis was a sudden one and Lis tried in-center, home peritoneal, back to in-center, and finally home hemo but none of these was a good fit. Better than the alternative, but not ideal! After about a year and a half on dialysis, Lis started to seriously consider a kidney transplant in order to improve her life and be able to do the things she wanted to do. There were two options: a cadaver kidney from someone who was deceased or a kidney from a living donor. The wait for a cadaver kidney is approximately 5 years while the wait for a living donor kidney could be much less depending on how many people are willing to be tested and if there is a match. Siblings are usually the best match since they share half of their DNA. Children and other relatives can be good matches as well. Friends or strangers can be tested as well and just by chance they may match. Unfortunately in Lis's case, she has no siblings. There were no other relatives or friends who stepped forward to be tested either. Cece is also an only child so when it came down to it, it was either me or waiting for a cadaver organ. Luckily, we were a very good match - at the sibling level 3/6 alleles matching - especially for a parent and child!
At first, Lis questioned taking my kidney because I am her daughter and she didn't want to harm me in any way, etc. It was never a question for me; I had two kidneys, why not give one away? I was scared of course, but never thought about not going through with it. Lis finally came around after some persistence and after about a year of blood tests, 24-hour urine collections (try carrying a couple liters of pee around on the T to see how fun this was), diagnostic scans, and meeting with tons of doctors, we finally had the surgery! Things went well and we have both made almost a full recovery at this point (Cece more so than Lis). It took some adjusting to taking all of the medications required but now Lis has a 25-year old healthy kidney instead of a defunct one so now she has a lot more energy and does not have to worry about being tied to a dialysis machine for 2 hours 4-5 times a week.
Now that we each have one (working) kidney, we are the SAME. Shortly after the surgery, we started referring to each other as such and eventually it morphed into "Samie."
Why are we writing this blog?
When I was growing up, Lis and I often went on trips together (much to my teachers' chagrin!) but when she got sick we stopped being able to do this. We still went on our yearly trip to the Cape, but even this was hard for Lis. With her new lease on life and new kidney, Lis is now more able to travel. Some things are still difficult (no, she can't go hiking or windsurfing or horseback riding), but overall she is physically a different person than two years ago. This summer we are taking our first big trip in approximately 6 years to Iceland and Norway. We chose these countries because Cece is attending a clinical biostatistics conference (aka nerd) in Bergen, Norway. We plan to take other trips but since this is the first and celebratory one, we wanted to document it with a blog.
We also wanted to use the blog as a way to bring awareness to organ donation. Living donation is a big committment; cadaver donation, not so much. I understand that religious beliefs may dicatate whether a person's organs can be donated after death, but every year hundreds of thousands of organs are effectively thrown in the trash by being buried or cremated. Yes, you read that correctly: THROWN IN THE TRASH! Think about becoming an organ donor. There are currently over 110,000 people in the U.S. alone awaiting organ or tissue transplants. You can sign up via the DMV when you renew/get your license or visit
Donate Life America to register online.
