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Brian Lehrer: Well, this is All Of It on WNYC with Alison Stewart, who I am definitely not. I'm Brian Lehrer, the host of the show that ended a little over an hour ago. I know what some of you must be thinking, "This guy has such a big ego that he's now bigfooting his way into hosting Alison's show," but no, I promise you it's not that at all. Alison asked me to come on and interview her on her show about something intense and meaningful that's going on in her life. Now I know what some others of you are thinking, "Wait, didn't you just interview Alison yesterday on your show Brian about that intense, meaningful thing in her life, Clarence Thomas misinterpreting her book in his affirmative action case opinion, making it seem like her book backed up his anti-affirmative action argument?" Well, Alison thinks it does just the opposite.

Yes, that happened, but if you could imagine something even more intense and meaningful in your life than being misquoted in a landmark Supreme Court decision, maybe it would be this. Alison, if you haven't heard yet, is about to donate a kidney to her sister. If that stopped you cold in your tracks, yes, it should. Alison Stewart is about to donate a kidney to her sister. If you didn't already admire Alison to the max, and if you didn't already think this is some crazy time to be Alison Stewart with the whole Clarence Thomas thing, well, there you go. The summer of 2023 is a time I'm sure she will never forget. Alison, I'm honored that you asked me to come on to help you tell the story to your listeners. Are you okay?

Alison Stewart: I'm okay.

Brian Lehrer: Good. Listeners, let me tell you how this half hour or so is going to go. I'm going to ask Alison a few questions to start. Again, we'll also be joined by Dr. Jonathan Berger, Surgical Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant program at the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. Then we'll take some phone calls. Let me invite some of you in like this. I know there are amazing stories that some of you must have of donating or receiving kidneys or other organs. Do we have any donors or recipients among us? Share your story, be in community with Alison, or ask Alison or Dr. Berger a question, or just tell Alison how much you love her and wish her good luck. 212-433-WNYC. Our always phone number, 212-433-9692.

We're definitely looking for a few donor or recipient stories, not an invitation you probably ever got before from a radio show. It can be good karma for Alison to hear you pay it forward to her with a little of your story too perhaps. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Alison, before we get to your story, if it's okay, would you tell everyone a little bit about your sister, Lisa? How did she come to need a kidney?

Alison Stewart: I'm going to do that, and while I do that, I think they're going to try to connect you the fancy way, to the fancy radio line. I'm sure you can listen at the same time. Yes, I have a sister named Lisa. The short story is that in February 2022, she had a heart transplant. We've been down the transplant road before. Unfortunately, her heart transplant went sideways. Without getting into too much detail of her personal story, she didn't really wake up for three months. She had pneumonia, she had blood clots, she had seizures, she had sepsis. It was a really terrifying time for the family. As I'm sure that Dr. Berger will explain to us, you know the heart and the kidneys, they are in conversation with one another. Once she finally did come back to and once we finally got all the terrible tubes, the breeding-- Well, not terrible tubes that kept her alive, but you know what I mean.

After we got her off life support, her kidneys suffered as a result, and they ceased to work. Sometimes after a heart transplant, organs that have gone offline will come back online, and hers did not. Around Christmas time, we started having the conversation about what the next steps were because dialysis is really tough. It's a really amazing science, science is amazing, but it's also not something that is terrifically sustainable. Also considering that she had this heart transplant, and all the immunosuppressants, and the possibility for infection, she is a particularly delicate case. That's where the kid sister comes into the picture. Is Brian back? No, Brian is not back yet. While we think about that, the phone lines are getting full. Nancy from New Brunswick has called in. Let's talk to Nancy. Hi, Nancy, thanks for calling in.

Nancy: Hi. I just wanted to encourage Alison, that this is no big deal. I had been married to a man for more than 20 years, had two children by him, and have since then been married for more than 30 years to another man, who is a professor at Rutgers, and that's why I'm in New Brunswick now. Anyway, my first husband was taking a drug for his heart. He had bad luck with it, and it damaged his heart, he needed a kidney transplant. Since my children were first in line, and I said, "This is crazy. Look, I'm in my 70s. I don't have my whole life ahead of me, and I'm perfectly healthy. You can have my kidney." Everybody leaped at the chance, and it's been nothing but a piece of cake. No scars, they go through your navel. I was in and out, and back to running again in a very short order. Don't make too much out of it. Everybody thinks you're being a hero, but it's no big deal.

Alison Stewart: Okay, thanks, Nancy.

Nancy: Okay.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to David from New York on line three. Hi, David.

David: Hi, how are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

David: Good. First of all, thank you for doing this. It's truly [unintelligible 00:06:36]. I am a physician, I'm a neurologist, and I'm also a liver recipient. I got my graph 32 years ago. It's really been a life-changing and family-changing experience. I've had the opportunity to raise my family, to be a husband, and to be the physician-scientists that I started out being. I just think that it is an incredibly generous and wonderful thing that you're doing, so thank you.

Alison Stewart: Oh, well, thank you. I'm so glad everything's worked out so well for you and your family. We're letting people know that actually we're having a moment of incredible irony, we're having trouble with Brian's connection. It's not like we're a professional radio station or anything, but we'll work this out. Let's talk to Michael from Long Island. Hi, Michael, thanks for calling in.

Michael: Hi, how are you doing? Thank you very much for what you're doing. I'm a non-directed donor. I donated my kidney back in 2018 when I was working as a detective for the NYPD. I know the other young lady said that it's not a big deal, but it is a big deal. The surgery is relatively safe. It's a major decision. People who are listening, I wanted them to know you're not only helping your sister. Because your sister needs a kidney she's on the deceased donor list and by you giving her your organ, you're removing her from the list and you're moving people up. I don't think people really understand that or take that into consideration. It's not just the one donation, multiple people could benefit from what you're doing. Currently, I work for the National Kidney Registry, which works with NYU Langone, the largest kidney exchange program in the United States.

I really appreciate you doing this coverage today because we need to normalize living organ donation and encourage people to look into it to see if it's something that they'd want to do.

Alison Stewart: Michael, thank you so much. That's actually one of the reasons we wanted to do this segment. Not just so I could get that-a-girls. Let's bring in Dr. Jonathan Berger, surgical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program at NYU Langone Transplant Institute. Dr. Berger, thanks for being with us.

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Hi. Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: I can hear you.

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Okay, great.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to read you what it says on my Patient Gateway. We're having this done at Mass General. "Robotic transplant kidney living donor laparoscopic nephrectomy." What's going to happen?

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Well, the operation is going to probably take anywhere from two to four hours. They are going to meet you in the morning, everybody is going to meet you in the pre-op area. You're going to meet an anesthesiologist, you're going to meet nurses, you're going to meet patient advocates, everyone's going to be in awe of you because what you're doing is heroic. I know your previous guest says it's no big deal, but that's the kind of thing that a hero would say. You're going to get a lot of congratulations and a lot of thank yous. You're going to go to the operating room, which, at our institution, and most institutions, people try to make as warm and as friendly an environment as possible. You may want to pick out some music that you like, as you go to sleep. They'll give you some general medicine and you'll go under general anesthesia.

That's all you will remember until you wake up. Now, while you're asleep several small incisions will be made on your abdomen. It all really depends on who's doing the surgery about precisely where those incisions are, but in 2023 most of these incisions are barely bigger than [crosstalk] a keyhole. Anywhere from one to three centimeters, and maybe one slightly larger incision just to get the kidney out. At the end of the operation, you'll wake up and you'll be very sore. I often tell people that kidney donors are often more sore than kidney recipients, because in order to do the operation they have to create space in the abdomen. The way they do that is they actually blow up your abdomen like a balloon with not exactly air, but carbon dioxide, so kind of like air. You're going to feel like you did 1,000 sit-ups.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] I've heard your shoulder can hurt because of that.

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Your shoulder can hurt. Yes, your shoulder can hurt because that air can move under the muscles, in your flank underneath your arm and your diaphragm as well, and that can get referred up to your shoulder, so you can get shoulder pain. The other reason you get shoulder pain is they have to put you on your side. I know you're listeners [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Oh, you're doing the C in YMCA.

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Yes, I'm doing the YMCA, but we have to roll you a little bit on your side because your kidneys are on your side in your back, and so they have to move you on your side to get access to your kidneys, and so they put your arm over like this. If you're out of shape and have no flexibility like me you can get some shoulder stiffness from that afterwards.

Alison Stewart: Let's bring Brian Lehrer back in. Hi Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, technology. I hope it goes better in the hospital than it's going with audio technology today. I was asking you before I got disconnected how you came to your decision to donate a kidney, and I didn't get to hear whether you gave a full response to that, so do you want to talk about that or if you did talk about it a little bit maybe talk about the process of determining that you were a match or is it automatic because it's a sibling?

Alison Stewart: No, not at all. The part of the process was because my sister had had this heart transplant, she's already on immunosuppressants, and we discovered we both have a blood type which is not a common blood type, the pool for people was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. I never blinked about it. The first thing I said was, "Well, I'm getting tested." Then she said, "Oh, I'm not taking your kidney." I think was exactly how she said it. [laughs] I was like, "Well, yes, you are." "I'm not taking your kidney." She's a big sister by the way, so that explains that. I filled out a form online with Mass General, very direct, and then I got a phone call and answered a few questions. We started this process back in February.

I'm looking at my patient gateway as we speak. Yes, February 7th was my first phone call with the folks up at MGH Transplant Clinic. Then I got a team. They give you a team, you have a patient advocate, you have a social worker, you have nurses, and then went through the process of the blood testing. So much blood testing, so much blood testing, and tissue typing. It's interesting with the blood testing when you first start out and maybe the doctor can fill in on this which I thought was really interesting. Oh, my sister's called in great. [laughs] She's like, "Why are you telling all my business?" Is that--

Brian Lehrer: Now you really don't need me.

Alison Stewart: No. The interesting thing was, they explain to you, "We may find something that you're not expecting to find out about your health," because it's tip to toe. You have to get a dental exam and a mammogram. You have to get colonoscopy. I discovered that I had mono at some point which I didn't know. I looked in my journal and I can tell when it is Brian, and you'll appreciate this. In my journal I'm writing, "I'm so tired. This job's killing me. I don't know if I can keep doing this five days a week." [laughs] It was clearly the--

Brian Lehrer: During this job or the previous job?

Alison Stewart: No. It was clearly three weeks when I must have had mono because I was so tired, but their testing was not bad, and it was also really fascinating. The science is fascinating. You get the CAT scan and the EKG and the stress test. I just loved it.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just processing the fact that you were walking around for weeks in proximity of me with mono, but we will leave it there on that.

Alison Stewart: I had no idea.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Berger, can I ask you to pull out a little bit and talk about the national context of this? How many people need kidneys in the New York area or nationally, and are there enough donors to meet the need? Because I know that's one of the reasons that Alison wanted to do this segment publicly at all.

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Sure. Yes. The short answer to your second question is no, nowhere close. We don't have enough kidney donors. It's a huge problem. Right now, really at any one time in the United States, there are probably somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant on the list like right now, and there are probably 20,000 to 25,000 kidney transplants done in the United States every year. If you do that math there's just not enough transplant activity unfortunately that's able to happen to get all those people transplanted quickly. I don't have all the numbers, but New York State there's probably about 7,000 people on the list right now, and about 2,000 kidney transplants are done in a year, so that lines up that just there's a lot of people out there who are waiting for transplant. [crosstalk] There's two ways of getting a kidney-- Yes, sure.

Brian Lehrer: I hate to ask it this way, but how many kidney patients do you lose, because of a shortage of organs?

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Too many. Having kidney disease is not good. It's not good for your heart. Being on dialysis is not good for your heart. You develop accelerated cardiovascular disease. You're at higher risk for heart attacks. It's not good for your bones. Your calcium metabolism is disturbed, and so your bones get brittle. Your blood counts are low. Your kidneys make a hormone called erythropoietin that stimulates your bone marrow to make red blood cells, so blood counts are low, people are weak, people are tired, and they're prone to infections and they're prone to other illnesses. Dialysis is amazing, dialysis is if you're comparing it to no dialysis, because without kidney function within a few weeks, you're going to, unfortunately, succumb to kidney failure and die.

Dialysis is great as a sub substitute for that, but it's like nothing beats the real thing. A fully functioning kidney does a lot of things that dialysis can't do. In addition to just the lifesaving aspect of it, the quality of life for patients on dialysis is often really low. It's like 10 or 15 hours a week where you're hooked up to a machine, and that's if you're slick at it. It's tiring and it's exhausting and most people have to do it at a dialysis center, people have to come and go for hours a week. It's like a full-time job, so in addition to the bad health effects, it's just demoralizing.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to ask you in a little while, and listeners be ready for this just in case anybody is inspired by this conversation to consider being a kidney donor or a donor of any other organ I'll ask Dr. Berger in a little while to tell us all what the first steps would be toward that, if anybody wants to do that, but we're going to take a very short break right now and then Allison's sister Lisa who's going to receive her kidney will also join us. Stay with us on All Of It.

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This is All Of It with Allison Stewart and me Brian Lehrer sitting in right now talking to Allison, helping in conversation to bring out her story of how she's about to be a kidney donor for her sister Lisa and also talking with Dr. Jonathan Berger, surgical director of the Kidney and pancreas transplant program at the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. With some of you, we've already heard some amazing stories. Thank you so much for sharing. 212-433 WNYC. Allison, I see your sister Lisa is on the line, and let me let you say hello to her.

Alison Stewart: Hi Lee.

Lisa: Hey there. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm fine. How are you?

Lisa: I'm fine.

[laughter]

I was just calling in to express my deep gratitude that you care so much about me and to tell you how much I appreciate it, and to tell you that I love you.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I love you back. You deserve a break. You've been through a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, Lisa, Alison said before--

Lisa: I just wanted to--

Brian Lehrer: Alison said before that your first response was, "No, you are not giving me your kidney." Can you talk about that interaction from your end?

Lisa: Yes, this is true. In fact, occasionally I still say that even though the transplant date is looming. I just felt weird about taking my younger sister's vital organ. I know everybody says, "Everyone does well and everybody's happy and everything," but it's still a thing. In my mind, you grow up and you're always taught to take care of your sister and grabbing vital organs just goes against that.

[laughter].

Brian Lehrer: It seems like you two laugh easily together. Alison, I know you or your listeners know you as someone who laughs easily. Have you even managed to laugh with each other about this looming surgery? You've been doing it in the last couple of minutes.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. I just keep telling her, "It's happening, so just show up. It's happening [laughs] there's no not happening. This is happening." No. We're very close and I think everybody in the family knows Lisa's had it really, really tough. She has been extremely brave in the past year. I just think it's the right thing to do. I have two, and you know what? I also left it up to the universe and to God and to all that. If it wasn't supposed to happen, I wouldn't have matched up. Something wouldn't have happened, but everything aligned really beautifully and perfectly, and it's going to be really nice that we're both going to be in really good health very shortly. That's exciting.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Lisa, you know you owe her big time now.

Lisa: Yes. I'd also like to give a shout-out to Mass General Transplant Services. They have been awesome and I've been on the heart transplant service and the kidney transplant service and they are the best.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you for calling in. Good luck to you. Alison's listeners who love her, now all love you too.

Lisa: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Berger, can I go back to you? What actually happens during the surgery? Is it simultaneous and they're in rooms next to each other? How does that work?

Dr. Jonathan Berger: It sounds like that's what's going to happen tomorrow. It doesn't have to be that way, but that's the traditional way in which it's done. Usually, the donor operation will start and then within a half hour, an hour after everything is on the road and moving forward, that's when we will start with the recipient side, and we'll bring the recipient back to a room that's usually pretty close by and do their operation. That operation also takes about three to four hours depending on all the other stuff that needs to happen in the operating room. There's this magical moment where we take the kidney out of a donor and we flush it with preservative solution, and then we put it in ice and then it's fun, you get to walk down the hall with this kidney to this other room, and you get to walk in the room, you're like, "Your kidney's here," and it's like, "We're here," and then everybody's like, "Okay. The kidney's here now."

Then as the operation's finishing up and the donor side, we get down to the business of doing the plumbing connections to put the new kidney in the recipient and usually wrap that up in about an hour or so. Then the donor will head to the recovery room, and then a few hours later, the recipient will head to the recovery room and if there's a lot of family involved, everyone's around going back and forth from one to the other for the hugs and kisses and it's really special.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another listener's story. Looks like Anne on Long Island has been a kidney donor. Anne, you're on WNYC on All Of It with Alison Stewart.

Thank you so much for calling in.

Anne: Thank you. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: We can hear just fine, yes.

Anne: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you.

Anne: I want to tell the story about my donation of a kidney to my sister 29 years ago, and I wish Alison and Lisa at least that long together with the shared kidney, but I want to tell one aspect. My sister and I were both in our 40s at the time, and my sister's kids were about 11 and 14. The kidney transplant took place in St. Louis. My sister had the kids go through a box of kidney beans and select the one that looked most like a kidney, and she took it to a jeweler before the surgery. I didn't know about this ahead of time, and she had the jeweler fashion a pendant that looked like a kidney bean, and I've been wearing that necklace on a gold chain around my neck ever since. I quite often get people to say to me, "That's an interesting necklace, is that a bean?" Then I tell them the story and the best part is that my sister and I are both well, and I wish the same to you.

Alison Stewart: Thanks, Anne.

Brian Lehrer: 29 years later.

Alison Stewart: Love it.

Anne: And counting. Good luck.

Alison Stewart: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: That's a beautiful story, a really beautiful story. Alison, listeners may be wondering about why you made the decision to go public, really public with this, doing this segment. Is it simply to be transparent with your radio family because you'll be out for a while, or are we also doing this because you want to spread the word about this world?

Alison Stewart: Yes. That's the answer. I wanted to be transparent, and you know this, Brian, there's a very intimate relationship with TalkRadio and with NPR and Public Radio and WNYC listeners. We're with people every day in their lives, in their ears. Especially I feel after the pandemic, it's been a very intimate and personal relationship with listeners, we've all been through something together and I'm going to be gone a significant amount of time, and I just wanted to be honest about it.

Then the idea was, as Dr. Berger said, there's a great need and I think people could learn from this experience. We could make a difference even if it was one person who decided to be a living donor. Something that's interesting, I learned that-- I don't know if they have it in New York, Dr. Berger. I'm sure they do. They have an exchange, like a kidney co-op kind of.

If I hadn't been the appropriate donor for my sister, I could have entered an exchange with someone else who could have been an appropriate donor, which I thought was really, really interesting. That opened my mind a lot to the idea of like, "Well, you could donate a kidney and not necessarily even know the person." Which is really, really interesting to me.

Brian Lehrer: Lets take another call. One more call. Karen in Stanford, you're on WNYC. Hi Karen.

Karen: Hi. Hi, Brian. Hi, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Hey, Karen.

Karen: Thank you for taking my call. I'm coming at this from a slightly different perspective. I am the mother of a 32-year-old man who has been on dialysis for about four months, and we recently found a directed donor, and we're scheduled to have the surgery on September 25th in Dallas, Texas. I wanted to speak a little bit more from the recipient's point of view and how people can find donors. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it because I'm so grateful that we were able to find the person who we do not know, but as I told the screener, both my son and I engaged in a huge social media campaign, and I highly recommend both doing that and also going to various organizations that have multitude of information about how to find a donor.

We got very lucky. I actually posted in an unusual place. I posted on LinkedIn. I've been on LinkedIn probably for 30 years, and through my connections, it just skyrocketed. I literally was getting messages from people in Europe and in Asia, prayers. We did find a donor that way, and this person lives in California. I live in Connecticut and my son lives in Dallas, but this man, he flew to Dallas for all his testing. He's been approved by the transplant committee, and now we're scheduled to go and it worked. It was amazing.

Alison Stewart: You know what's really funny, Brian, when she said it approved by the transplant committee, you go through all these tests and if you're an overachiever, you're like, "Oh, how can I ace this test?" You realize there's nothing you can really do [laughs] you're like, "I'm going to pass this test." I was like, "Oh, wait. I can't really-- aside from just being in good health."

Brian Lehrer: Karen, thank you very much. Well, maybe that's a good story on which to come back to you, Dr. Berger, for what I said I was going to ask you earlier, and that is for anybody who might be inspired by this to consider becoming a kidney donor, what should they do? Who should they contact?

Dr. Jonathan Berger: Sure. There's different ways of doing it, obviously. If you happen to know somebody who has trouble with their kidneys, that's the place to start. I'm sure there are many people out there who know somebody either in their family or otherwise, people have a hard time asking for help. This is a very awkward thing for people with kidney disease and who are on dialysis to do. Nobody wants to be the person to ask for a kidney. I think a lot of times they're looking for someone to reach out to them. If this is something you're interested in, that's the most direct way to start. If you don't know anybody you can look towards your local hospitals. If you're in New York, there's seven or eight different transplant centers that you can reach out to directly. You can go to the National Kidney Foundation webpage, and they can give you some information about how to get started.

One of the callers worked for the National Kidney Registry, one of the callers earlier, a donor who went on to work for the National Kidney Registry. That's that exchange program. That's one of those exchange programs that you were mentioning about for incompatible donation. You can reach out through their website, and they can give you information about how to get started as a kidney donor. Those are the ways that people get started with this. Then usually you get plugged into whatever local center with transplant surgeons and transplant nephrologists, kidney doctors. They can meet with you and run your blood tests and see if you can ace the test, and ultimately be that overachiever who can donate a kidney.

Alison Stewart: I'm such a dork, can't believe it.

Dr. Jonathan Berger: That's okay, I'm too, so you're all good.

Brian Lehrer: I said Karen was going to be the last call, but let me get one more donor story in here real quick. Ariel, I'm sorry, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. We're going to have to keep this really short, but it seems like you have a beautiful story to tell. Can you give us a quick version?

Ariel: Yes. I donated my kidney through non-directed or anonymous donation, meaning that I still to this day have no idea who my kidney went to. I have no connection with anyone that needed a kidney. It's the recipient's family that called in, social media. That's how I found out about the kidney donation process. I read a story years ago, it planted a seed in my mind. Then finally when I was in a good place in my life and career, I decided to proceed. I donated in March of 2022. Since having donated I've run ultra-marathons, sometimes I forget that I even donated. Alison, to you, I wish you and your sister just the speediest recovery. I hope that there are many days in both of your lives where you also forget that you even went through all of this and it's just a dot in the past, as I'm sure it will be.

Alison Stewart: Do I have to run a marathon?

Ariel: You do not.

Alison Stewart: Just want to clarify, that I don't. Thanks, Ariel.

Brian Lehrer: You've raised the bar, Ariel.

Alison Stewart: It's funny. Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. That's an inspiration, absolutely, to know that you could train for a marathon if you wanted to. There are so many texts and tweets coming in, sending you love, Alison, wishing you all the best for this. When do you expect to be back on the show?

Alison Stewart: I am hoping to be back after Labor Day. All Of It turns five, believe it or not, on September 17th. I'll be back way before then. That's my hope. I'm sure I'll be back by Labor Day.

Brian Lehrer: What can listeners do to support you, or maybe I should ask Dr. Berger because he's been through this with other donors? What can listeners do Dr. Berger, to support Alison and her sister?

Dr. Jonathan Berger: I think love and tweets are great. I think that you have a lot of people out there who love you and care about you and you're a personality on the radio, which means that you don't even know the people who love and care about you. I think that's amazing. I think people, if you can become more aware of kidney disease and the possibilities for living donation. It goes beyond even just kidney disease. We do living donor liver transplants for people with liver disease. I think we're lucky to live in a time where medicine and technology's advanced to the point where this is-- I don't want to say it's routine, but it's done 6,000 times a year in the United States and even more around the world. It's very safe. The chance of becoming sick with kidney disease as a kidney donor is actually lower than the general American population, it's because you aced all those tests.

We select people. Our job is to find people and make sure that they're good candidates for donation. That means you got to have great kidneys. You got to be in good shape and it's safe. I want people to know that there's a lot of people out there who need help. Again, like one of the callers said earlier, you're not just helping the person you're donating directly to because that list is super long and there's a lot of people who just don't have living donors. If the people who have living donors can get transplanted, that gives more space to decrease the amount of time people are waiting. In New York City, at least a few years ago, on average, the wait times are six years for a kidney transplant from the waitlist. That's just too long. Like you said, Brian, a lot of people just aren't able to make it that long. Living donation is really the best way to help with that.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Berger from NYU Langone, thank you so much for joining us. We know so many listeners love you, Alison. Everybody at work loves you. Clarence Thomas, if you're listening, you could make amends. Wish Alison, good luck by saying, "No I really did misinterpret her book and my affirmative action decision." Now Alison, I hereby officially return the reigns of your show back to you.

Alison Stewart: Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Dr. Berger. Really appreciate it. Thanks to everybody who called in. Here's the thing, I'm an active person. I like to do things. What we're going to do next for the end of the show, I'm going to ask you dear listeners and some friends of the show, what I can read, what I can watch, what I can listen to while I'm recovering at home. Help me keep busy for a few weeks. The numbers 212-433-969, 221-433WNYC we'll take your calls after a quick break.

 

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