SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

She could have stopped at saving her husband. Instead they joined a 5-way kidney swap.:

When Tara Berliski learned her husband needed a kidney, she did what she said any spouse would do: She offered him her own. And they were a match. But John "HB" Berliski, it turns out, could match with just about anyone.

John Berliski has type AB blood, which makes him a universal recipient.

[...] "AB blood types can receive from any donor. And we have AB donors as well, but they're very hard to match because they can only give to AB patients," said Valerie Jackson, the living donor coordinator at Houston Methodist hospital. "So when John said, 'Yes, I'll go ahead and help whomever,' because of the power of his to receive from anybody, we were really able to move people who were not able to get moved and match up for years."

According to npr:

Justin Barrow, a 40-year-old youth pastor in Longville, La., has a rare kidney disorder, and had a transplant when he was 15; it was beginning to falter. A cousin offered to donate their kidney, but doctors said it wasn't a good match. A kidney from Tara Berliski would be.

Returning to our original story:

[...] Paula Gerrick, 51, had signed up as a potential donor for her sister years ago. Like John Berliski, she is type AB. But while that blood type works well for recipients, it's more limiting for donors — they can only give to other AB recipients. So despite wanting to save her sister, Diane Poenitzsch, they weren't a match. And Poenitzsch lingered on the donor list, from January 2017 until this month. Her kidney was the final organ in the transplant chain, which necessitated 10 surgeries over two days.

[...] But it wasn't just Barrow she helped. The Berliskis were the missing pieces needed to set off a chain reaction: Barrow's cousin, Samantha Barrow, donated a kidney to Misael Gonzalez. Gonzalez's mother, Teresa Salcedo, who matched her son, but entered the swap so he could find a donor with a younger kidney, donated to Debra Lewing. Lewing's boss, Dawn Thomas, first learned of Lewing's failing kidney health at the beginning of the pandemic when Lewing requested to work from home because she was at-risk. "If you need a kidney, just take one of mine," Thomas told her employee then. When they weren't a match, they entered the swap program; Thomas donated to Diane Poenitzsch.

And Poenitzsch's sister Gerik, with the AB blood rounded out the circle, donating to John Berliski.

Original Submission