While the need for organ donors never ends, April is used to put extra attention on the issue with National Donate Life Month.
More than 170 million people have signed up to be organ, eye and tissue donors after death. But many of them will never actually be able to donate.
That's mainly for two reasons:
First, your family can still prevent your donations after you die, even if you're registered — even if it's marked on your driver's license, and even if it's in your will.
Two, you have to die in specific circumstances to be able to donate most of your organs and tissue.
And as life-saving as those organs that do get donated are, organs like kidneys and livers don't usually last as long when they're from deceased donors, compared to organs that come from living donors.
The National Kidney Foundation is bringing new light to that option. They worked with filmmaker Melissa Silverman this month, who uses humor to raise awareness in a PSA campaign starring real living donors.
It's something I have personal experience with, too. When my sister, Alese, got her chronic kidney disease diagnosis about a decade ago, I knew it was time to step up. Alese was told that it was possible she'd die waiting for a kidney transplant without a living donor.
Over 5,600 people in the U.S die each year while on the transplant waiting list, according to Donate Life America.
The vast majority of people on that waitlist, 86%, are waiting for a kidney for an average of three to five years. In the meantime, dialysis to keep them alive is a miracle, but it wreaks havoc on their body.
We got to skip dialysis for Alese. While the physical and psychological testing took several weeks to see if I was a match, and healthy enough to donate at all, it was a blink of the eye in comparison to those waiting on the list.
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In December of 2017, I was told I was a match. Incredible news considering Alese and I are not biologically related. A month and a half later, I was cleared to donate, and in February of 2018, I donated my right kidney to Alese at Tampa General Hospital.
I was lucky to donate at a place that routinely leads the country in transplants, not just in numbers, but in good outcomes. In 2024, TGH performed a whopping 899 transplants, more than half of which were kidneys, and the most of any transplant center in the country. Last year, they performed almost as many, — breaking their own records for kidneys and livers.
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Eight years after my own donation, Alese and I are both doing great. She's writing her first book, a romance novel with a disabled protagonist, and I've been given the gift of watching her flourish. Plus, my kidney function numbers are so good that you can't tell on paper that I have just one kidney.
I could write a book about my experience and everything I learned, but I wanted to share my conversation with a local expert.
I recently sat down with Savanna Lanza, chief executive officer at the National Kidney Foundation of Florida, to discuss the growing need for donors.
You can read a longer version of our conversation, transcribed below, or listen to the shortened version at the media player at the top of this story.
Just to put things into perspective, Tampa General Hospital performed more organ transplants in 2024 than any other transplant center in the country, nearly 900 life-saving operations. And then Florida, as a state, conducted the second most number of transplants that same year. And then in 2025, TGH broke records again. It's wonderful that TGH has connected so many people to these life-saving transplants, but what does that say about the immense and growing need for organ donation?
Yes, it is amazing that they've been able to succeed in so many life-saving operations for patients, but there's so many more patients that are on the wait list nationwide, waiting for an organ, whether from a living or a deceased donor.
So the need is still tremendous. We actually have roughly 10 transplant centers in the whole state of Florida, but still hundreds of thousands of patients still on the wait list.
What's the average wait time for somebody to get a kidney off the transplant list when they're not getting it from a living donor?
Roughly like a five-year wait time is what these individuals are seeing to get a kidney from a deceased donor.
It seems like year after year, we're hearing more and more about the number of patients with chronic kidney disease and other conditions that require organ and tissue transplants. Do we have any idea why that need is growing every year?
Lifestyle plays a big factor into that. So hypertension and diabetes are the leading causes of kidney failure, and unfortunately, we're seeing all of those issues increase for people in the United States, and that leads to needing either dialysis or the only other option for someone in end-stage renal disease is a kidney transplant.
I donated my right kidney to my stepsister in 2018 and I think a lot of people are aware that that's a thing that you can do. I was aware before that, but I didn't give it any second thought until Alese got sick. What should donors like me be sharing with people to encourage them to consider doing the same?
Well, I would say the easiest thing that you can do is sign up to be an organ donor. So once you do pass on and you don't need those organs anymore, you can save someone's life. You can save up to 11 lives through organ or tissue donation once you don't need those organs anymore, and there's still a lot of questions about that, but that's so important that we're encouraging people to become an organ donor once they pass on.
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Now, living donation is a whole different gift of life that you can give to someone. There's only a couple organs where you can donate while you're still living, so part of your liver and your kidney, you only need one kidney to live a normal, healthy lifestyle.
Unfortunately, we haven't seen either deceased or living donation increase over [the] decades. So the number of individuals having kidney disease is increasing, the number of individuals needing transplants is going up, but organ donation has really stayed flat for many, many years now. We did see a little bit of an increase in the 80s or 90s, due to, like, opioid use, but that line has really flattened out since then, and there's still hundreds of thousands of people waiting for that life-saving organ.
Could you talk about life after living donation?
What's actually surprising to a lot of people is that living organ donors actually live such a healthy and normal lifestyle. Once they've gone through the operation and gone through recovery, which is really minimal these days, it's a very easy, simple operation. They experience very little pain, and then they go on to live a very normal lifestyle. So a lot of people are discouraged thinking that this will change their life. They can't do certain things, participate in certain sports, but in reality, they're able to just go on and live normally after that gift of life.
If I want to donate a kidney or part of my liver as a living donor, where do I start?
So you would start at the transplant center where you would want to have the operation. So if you know someone that needs a kidney, you can actually go to the transplant center, first, say, Tampa General Hospital, and start undergoing some of the testing. It's pretty extensive, including physical and psychological tests. They just want to make sure everyone is really willing and ready to do this. And you can even do it if you don't know someone that needs the the kidney or organ.
It's called altruistic donation, and we've seen a lot of people, even some famous people, looking into that, and it's just an incredible way to be a true hero.
If I'm deadset on donating my kidney or part of my liver to a specific person - I'm not interested in donating to a stranger for whatever personal reason that may be - can you talk a little bit about the process of donating on behalf of somebody to help them get their organ sooner, if I'm not a match for them?
So, what we would call that is the kidney exchange, a kidney pair program. And if you are not a perfect match for the person that is looking for the kidney, you can actually still undergo the entire process, and they will find someone who is a match that your kidney can go to. And then once that donation has been made, there's another match for the other recipients. So it's called the paired exchange program. And it's amazing that we can, you know, sometimes get up to like, 10 or more kidneys going in all different kinds of directions across the country to create that chain and to give more people that opportunity.
