Kidneys are body parts that most people never really think about. But kidney function is critical to human life.

37 million Americans suffer from some kind of kidney disease. Most people don’t even know it, but people with less than 10% of their normal kidney function must rely on dialysis – a medical process by which kidney function (filtering waste and excess water from the blood) is performed by a machine. Dialysis is exhuasting, oftentimes making it impossible for people to continue working a full time job. It’s also very expensive and extremely hard on the body and the heart. For people who qualify, living kidney donation is a literal life-saver.

While kidneys from a deceased donor is an option for some, most kidneys from the deceased are not suitable for transplant. And a kidney from a living donor will typically function nearly twice as long as a kidney from a deceased donor. Every year thousands of people die waiting for a kidney, and the number of people on the wait list continue to climb faster than the available kidneys. It’s a completely solvable crisis.

It’s true. Living kidney donation has no measured impact on how long you live and it has almost no impact on your post-surgery lifestyle. Basically there are a few over the counter drugs you shouldn’t take anymore after donating, but that’s about it for most folks. Here’s a list of post kidney donation considerations from the National Kidney Foundation.

Most donors can return to work within about 2 weeks of donation and can return to all normal activities (exercise, etc.) within about 6 weeks of donation.

Though the risk of long-term complications are extremely rare, if a living donor experiences kidney failure later in life and needs a transplant, they are given priority on the waitlist of a donor kidney.

If we can increase the number of non-directed donors, we could significantly decrease the size of the kidney waiting list with a fraction of the donors we’d need if we relied on deceased or paired donors. In some cases a non-directed donors can save several lives through a single donation. All we need is a few called people willing to step up and make this gift. Could you be one of them?