In 2022 Angela Zivkovich of Denver saw a news story that caught her center. In it, a woman interviewed described the search for a donor kidney friction match for her sick husband. Was there anyone who would be willing to donate a kidney to help save his life?

Zivkovich, living organ donor with Raynette Gore, who received a portion of Zivkovich's liver in a lifesaving 2022 surgery.
Angela Zivkovich, a living organ donor, with Raynette Gore, who received a portion of Zivkovich's liver in a lifesaving 2022 surgery. Zivkovich also has donated one of her kidneys to a recipient who lives in Georgia. Photograph courtesy Angela Zivkovich.

Zivkovich, then 36, wasn't enlightened that in that location were living organ donors. Only she did her research and discovered that living donation is an important way for people needing transplants to shortcut what tin exist years on waiting lists for deceased donor organs.

Zivkovich fit the living organ donor neb. She was young and good for you, with a solid job and a strong support arrangement. She looked into where she might make a kidney donation and settled on UCHealth Academy of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus and its well-regarded Transplant Heart. Over a period of three years, Zivkovich became i of only six people to make a non-directed (altruistic) living donation of her kidney and a portion of her liver at UCH. Another 7 made their non-directed living liver donation at UCH and their kidney donations elsewhere.

In that location are many reasons that Zivkovich fabricated a great donor. Mayhap most importantly, she possesses a strong and longstanding will to help others – those she knows and those she does not.

Meeting the tests for living organ donation

Her road to double-donation began with a lengthy testing and evaluation process at UCH to ensure she was in practiced wellness both physically and emotionally and would have support for her recovery from the kidney donation. A living organ donor abet from the infirmary assisted her with the decision, said Dana Parker, one of those who holds the position at UCH. She is also a licensed clinical social worker, some other key member of the living donation squad.

Living organ donor aid for the tiniest among us

University of Colorado Infirmary and the University of Colorado accept a long and distinguished history in the field of liver transplant. Dr. Thomas Starzl performed the offset liver transplant in 1963 at what was then the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. In 1997, a UCH team led past Dr. Igal Kam performed the commencement adult-to-adult living donor liver transplant in the The states.

Simply many infants demand liver transplants, heightening the importance of living adult donors. To that terminate, Anschutz Medical Campus neighbors UCH and Children's Hospital Colorado interact to salve the lives of any child who needs a liver, said CU chief of Transplant Surgery Dr. Elizabeth Pomfret.

"With our living (organ) donor programme, nosotros've been able to essentially eliminate the waiting list at Children'south Colorado," she said. "Nosotros tin can transplant livers for every child who [needs] one."

"Living (organ) donor advocates ensure that every living (organ) donor is given the information necessary to brand an informed decision," Parker said. That includes letting donors know that they tin reconsider their option right upward to the fourth dimension of beingness wheeled into surgery, she added.

Those requirements satisfied and Zivkovich donated her left kidney to a recipient she did not know on Sept. 17, 2017.

Identity questions about organ recipient

Subsequently a three-day hospital stay, she made a full recovery, with considerable assistance from her friends, coworkers, employer and particularly her female parent, Marianne, whom Zivkovich calls her rock. She went on with her life – a steady, fulfilling chore with enough of time for hiking, running and traveling. That'south the norm for living kidney donors, Parker noted.

In fact, she said, "Those who donate kidneys tend to live a little longer. We have the healthiest people and they as well do healthy things and become regular medical intendance."

But 1 question lingered for Zivkovich.

She learned from her transplant surgeon, Dr. Thomas Bak, that her bearding beneficiary was recovering well with the donated kidney. Only Zivkovich nonetheless yearned to meet the person she had helped and wrote a letter of the alphabet to that consequence. For six months, she waited without a respond. Then came "a lovely card" from the woman whose life Zivkovich'south selfless act profoundly changed.

"The card described the impact it had to get a kidney on her and her kids' lives," Zivkovich recalled. "It changed everything for her to get off dialysis and it had a ripple effect on her support network."

Zivkovich and the recipient, who lives in Georgia, accept never met contiguous, merely nevertheless commutation emails periodically.

It turns out that the recipient also changed Zivkovich's life and set information technology on yet another new course.

"Hearing the touch of my kidney donation and the clear, positive bear upon it had on someone's life made me recollect, 'If I could exercise that again for someone else, I would,'" Zivkovich said.

On to the next living organ donation

A yr or and so later, that chance arrived. Zivkovich and Marianne were attention a UCHealth Donor Appreciation event when a liver transplant coordinator mentioned to Angela that she could exist a liver donor. Her mom had a succinct response: "Don't even recall about it."

Dr. Elizabeth Pomfret, chief of transplant surgery, which includes those from living organ donors.
Dr. Elizabeth Pomfret

Just she did. She studied up on liver donation, a more than involved surgery with greater brusque-term risk. A donor like Zivkovich can live just fine with ane kidney, but there is simply i liver to give. Zivkovich learned that in a living donor liver process, i surgical team takes a portion of the donor's liver, which a split team uses to replace the recipient's diseased liver. Over time, the donor'due south liver regenerates, while the recipient's grows.

Subsequently conscientious research, bolstered by her positive kidney donation experience with the UCH team, Zivkovich decided to commence on the process to get a living liver donor. Marianne cried when she heard the news.

"She said, 'Please don't do it, just if you exercise, you lot know I'll support you,'" Zivkovich recalled. "She was 100 percent with me through it all. She knew how important it was, she was only worried most me."

Afterward another long period of preparation, including imaging of her liver, blood tests, and psychological questions that probed her reasons for consenting to a second donation, Zivkovich was ready for another process. Her motivation had not changed since the kidney donation.

"I felt for a very modest risk to myself, there is a very clear benefit to someone else'south life," she said.

The lifesaving lobe donation

On June ten, 2019, Zivkovich rolled into an operating room at UCH for the procedure, with Dr. Elizabeth Pomfret, chief of Transplant Surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The recipient, whom Zivkovich again did non know, lay on a table in an adjacent OR, pending a lifesaving portion of liver with a split surgical team.

Pomfret took the left lobe of Zivkovich's liver, about xl% of the whole liver volume. That decision, she said, is based on anatomy.

"We accept the least corporeality possible from the donor, depending on the size and disease of the recipient," Pomfret said. "The left lobe was sufficient in Angela's case."

The surgery also involved removing Zivkovich'southward gallbladder, a small pouch that stores bile made in the liver and releases it into the intestine to help assimilate nutrient. Without the gallbladder, bile merely flows continuously into the intestine, Pomfret said.

Following the successful procedure, Zivkovich spent four days at UCH. Having donated the kidney, she had a better thought of what to expect from her recovery, simply her ICU stay was longer and she had more pain from larger surgical incision – the kidney process was done laparoscopically. Only once again, her support system, led by Marianne, rallied to her aid, delivering meals, mowing the lawn, walking the dog and mostly helping keep life on an even keel.

Her employer allowed her to accept two months for recovery – a month longer than she needed for the kidney process because of fatigue. That was to be expected, Pomfret said.

"Fatigue is very typical. All the body's free energy is going toward liver regeneration," she explained. Most donors regain the majority of their liver function after two or 3 months, Pomfret added. As for Zivkovich, her liver had regenerated to 94% of its original book at ane year, and was functioning at 100%, she said.

Meanwhile, her UCHealth team, including surgeons, nurses, coordinators and social workers, responded quickly when she had questions about her recovery.

"Their back up was amazing through both procedures," Zivkovich said. "I wouldn't accept washed the second one if I'd had whatsoever questions about how things had gone with the first ane."

Recipient reaches out

Zivkovich's living liver donation once again changed the fortunes of a very ill person. But this time, she got an even closer wait at the results of her altruism.

Gore immediately wanted to meet Zivkovich after her living organ donation, and the two have formed deep bonds. Angela Zivkovich.
Gore immediately wanted to meet Angela Zivkovich, who was her living organ donor, after the surgery, and the 2 accept formed deep bonds. Photo courtesy of Angela Zivkovich.

Her recipient insisted that she run into her donor and pushed to exercise and then. After 2 months to ensure healthy recoveries of both donor and recipient, the transplant teams at UCH arranged a coming together. Angela and Marianne walked through a door and found Raynette Gore, healthy because of Angela's gift, and her son waiting for them.

"Nosotros looked at each other and started crying," said Zivkovich. She and Raynette have since maintained their connexion and attended a Donor Appreciation event together.

Without Zivkovich's donation, Raynette faced a grim future. The waiting list for a liver transplant is based on illness – those who are sickest, as adamant by their high MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Illness) scores, are at the top. Patients with lower MELD scores face the terrible prospect of improving their chances for transplant merely past getting sicker. With a living liver donation, Raynette averted that course.

"I saved her life," Zivkovich said. "How many people become to make that decision to modify a life?"

A life of helping others leads to donation

Peradventure it'south going a bit too far to say Angela Zivkovich was destined to make that decision, but not by much. She grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where she said she volunteered at a homeless shelter equally a high schoolhouse educatee.

"I take e'er looked for how to give dorsum and contribute to society," she said. "Information technology's something I ever found was important to incorporate in my life."

Her actions before her living organ donations support that. After graduating from the Academy of New Mexico with a chemical engineering caste and earning a master's degree from the Academy of California, Santa Barbara, Zivkovich volunteered with the Peace Corps in Republic of uganda for two years. She worked in an orphanage to teach reading and life skills to children and as well helped widows of AIDS victims. That piece of work used a grant from the U.S. government to finance the purchase of 12 pregnant cows that produced milk for diet and market sale for much-needed financial support. Some other community project focused on helping communities build h2o wells shut to home.

Later her Peace Corps stint, Zivkovich spent two years in Savannah, Georgia at the Anderson Cancer Institute, which invested in inquiry to detect biomarkers for melanoma. There she worked on genomic sequencing and data analysis. 10 years agone, she moved to Denver, where she does regulatory and policy work for an free energy visitor. She chuckles at the mention of her varied career.

"Where my life has led me, I go," Zivkovich said. The two women whose lives she'due south touched are no doubt grateful for that philosophy.

The case for living organ donation

She strongly urges those considering living donation to practise their homework, evaluate the risks, exist gear up for short-term wellness setbacks, and make sure they have a strong support organization. Only she emphasizes the powerful benefits pending people who qualify to become donors.

"Consider what yous can do for someone and actually weigh that," Zivkovich said. "We practice riskier things on a daily basis with no clear benefit. If it is the correct fit for you, you won't regret it."

Pomfret lauds her commitment, as well every bit others who have decided to become living organ donors.

"Living donation is admittedly critical," she said. "Nosotros don't have enough organs to encounter the needs of people awaiting transplant. If nosotros didn't have living (organ) donors and special people like Angela who are willing to do something without knowing who it is benefiting – just out of the goodness of their hearts – nosotros would take many more people die without a transplant."

For more information almost becoming a living kidney or liver donor, visit the UCHealth website .