A heart-warming holiday story

As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. I help manage the marketing for our transplant center, which planned to perform San Diego’s first three-way kidney exchange between six people this week. Our transplant center director asked us to pitch the story to local media so we could get some positive coverage, so we started planning for the best way to pitch it about three weeks ago. Our limitations included the fact that it’s a complicated story; all six people wanted to remain anonymous; and, although it was unlikely, any one of them could have backed out at the last minute.

The three-way exchange worked like this:

• An altruistic donor stepped forward and volunteered to anonymously donate a kidney, simply because she wanted to help save a life.
• Her kidney was given to a woman we’ll call “the wife.” The wife’s husband had wanted to donate but was not a match – and because his wife received a kidney from the altruistic donor, he agreed to donate his kidney to a man he didn’t know.
• That man’s step-daughter wanted to donate her kidney to her step-father but wasn’t a match – so when her step-father received a kidney from “the husband,” she agreed to donate her kidney to a local college student who was on the transplant waiting list.

Complicated? Yes. The process of identifying the blood type and antibody matches between all six people took nearly a year. And all three donors were giving their kidney to a complete stranger. The first two sets of transplants took place this past Tuesday, with the third set completed on Wednesday. The average length of stay following a kidney transplant is 3-4 days, meaning all six patients will be home for the holidays.

Initially we decided to focus our pitch on print publications only, because they’d have the ability to tell the story in a feature format with all the essential details, while keeping the patients’ identities anonymous. We were afraid the story was too complicated to tell in a 60-second broadcast without the visual interest of having the patients on camera.

But as soon as a preview of the transplants was published in an online version of a local newspaper, every news organization in town started calling. We have appeared either in print or broadcast news every day this week, including the morning, evening, and late-night broadcasts of the local affiliates for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and Univision, as well as KPBS radio and numerous local papers. So two colleagues and I have spent the entire week escorting reporters and photographers and coordinating interviews with our transplant center staff and surgeons.

This story came together beautifully at the end because two of the kidney recipients decided to share their story with reporters, simply because they wanted to thank their anonymous donors. So our most recent coverage has included post-surgery interviews with two of the patients who had very touching words of thanks for the people who so graciously donated a kidney to them.

If you’re interested in the story, here are some of the better articles or broadcasts to check out:

• This North County Times article has a photo gallery of some incredible images taken during the surgery.
• This broadcast aired on Wednesday’s CBS evening news (video clips on left side of page)
• This broadcast aired last night on ABC