Gift of life - Donor coordinator becomes one herself

As an organ-donation coordinator for Carolina Donor Services, Julie Landon works closely with people receiving a donated organ. So, she has seen close up what that gift can mean to someone.

Most donated organs come from people who have died. But living people can donate part of their liver, a lobe of a lung or a kidney, and, after she had been doing the work for a while, Landon started thinking about donating one of her kidneys.

Worrying about needing the second kidney later wasn't a big issue, she said. But she has a son, and one question she did ask herself was, "Should I keep a kidney in case my son ever needed it?"

She also pondered the surgery itself. Although donating a kidney is a relatively safe operation, Landon, who had been an emergency-room nurse before taking the job with Carolina Donor Services, was well aware of the dangers associated with the surgery -- a blood clot, an allergic reaction to the anesthetic, excessive bleeding, nicking the bowels with a scalpel.

"I could think of everything that cold go wrong, and my nursing friends were sure to point that out to me also," she said.

In the end, she decided that it was something she wanted to do.

In the course of her work, she met Terry Hall, who had already received one donated kidney but who was going to need another, and his wife, Sandi, who is a nurse at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. After getting to know them a bit, she started thinking, "Terry and Sandi are such nice people. If I'm going to give a kidney to someone, why not Terry?"

Landon said she has a strong sense of faith, and that it came to seem as if she had met them for a reason.

"I think, from the very beginning, that this was what was supposed to happen," she said.

When she told other members of her family that she planned to donate a kidney, one asked whether she was crazy. For the most part, though, everyone was supportive.

The surgery took place June 6 with Landon in one operating room, and Hall in another one nearby. Usually, the left kidney is the one taken because it's the one most easily removed, and that was the case with her.

Recovery takes awhile, and she was out of work for six weeks. But, in some respects, she was pleasantly surprised.

"It wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be," she said. "After two weeks, I felt pretty good."

In time, she was back to feeling the same as she did before the operation.

"There are no changes in my body that I can tell," she said. "Really, I don't even think about it."

In her work, Landon often deals with people who have just lost someone. When she approaches someone about donating, she wants a "yes" but she would not bring up the fact that she has donated one of her own kidneys.

"I wouldn't want them to feel pressured," she said.

As for herself, she would do it again in a heartbeat, she said. "It was a truly wonderful experience."

She has seen the Halls since. She has been to their house. She has run into them at events and bumped into him at the hospital when he came in for a checkup. In the early days after the operation, while they were both still in the hospital, Terry Hall came by her room.

"He was pretty emotional that morning," she said. "I think, through it all, he couldn't understand why I would give him a kidney."

Part of the reason, she said, is because she knew what a good father he is to the Halls' three daughters.

"I thought what a terrible waste it would be for those girls to have to grow up without their father," Landon said.