Kentucky man donates kidney to stranger to save his wife

Kentucky man donates kidney to stranger to save his wife, Don Kraemer wanted to give his wife, Lori, the kidney she so desperately needed.

But his kidney wasn’t a match.

So the couple took another route. Rather than have Lori wait years on a transplant list, they decided to try to get a kidney from a live donor another way.

They registered with the living donor paired exchange program, which lets potential donors and recipients who are incompatible find a match with another donor/recipient pair.

The Kraemers waited about seven months for a match.

Last Wednesday, the same day 14-year-old Kayla Baker of Cambridge got a new lung in a Toronto hospital, the Kraemers underwent their own surgeries: Lori to receive a kidney from a stranger, and Don to donate one of his kidneys to an unknown person on the living donor registry.

Don Kraemer wrote about it last week on Facebook.

“This week is one I will never forget as I have made one of the most important contributions that I could ever do in life,” he said.

“I donated a kidney so that a complete stranger could have a second chance at life and, in the process, helped allow their loved one to help save my wife’s life in a paired exchange.

“I’ve been termed as a hero to two people — the fact I gave an organ to a complete stranger and doing that, it helped another person to donate to my wife,” he said.

Lori Kraemer was on dialysis for 2 ½ years before getting her new kidney. She had been told to expect a wait of four to five years for a kidney from the deceased donor list.

The mother of three went into renal failure in August 2010. It was related to a condition diagnosed in the early 1990s called polycystic kidney disease, which is when cysts form on the kidneys.

She was exhausted, couldn’t sleep or keep water down, and suffered from severe itching.

Ending up in an intensive care ward “was a major wake-up call,” she said. She recalls thinking, “I don’t want to die. I want to live for my family. I don’t want my husband to be widowed.”

Both she and her husband lost their fathers at a young age. They knew what it was like for children to grow up with one parent.

Lori Kraemer, 41, gushed about her husband on Facebook.

“Thank you hon for what you’ve done for me!!!!!! I am so proud of you. You have been so brave,” she said “I love you!!!!”

In an interview from a Hamilton hospital before being discharged Monday, she called her husband her “hero.”

“He is so good and so brave. I just love him dearly,” she said.

“I go to bed every night here in hospital with a big smile on my face. I’m just over the moon (because of) what he did for me, and what a perfect stranger has done.”

She felt better almost immediately after waking from the surgery.

“I feel incredible,” she said. “I feel so full of energy. I feel so much better than when I was on dialysis.”

She is adopted, which meant she had no siblings who could donate a kidney.

Don Kraemer, 42, was willing to risk giving a kidney to his wife. He felt the same way about giving it to a stranger to help his wife.

He had to lose 100 pounds and was still heavier than doctors would have liked when he donated his kidney.

His surgery went well, although, “the abdominal area, it hurt, oh did it hurt,” he said. “It wasn’t easy. Going through it has made our family stronger.”

The couple has a 12-year-old son and twin daughters aged 14.

Don Kraemer will be off his job as program manager at Linamar in Guelph for four to eight weeks.

“We’re still in the surreal stage,” he said. “We’re thankful. There is no greater feeling than knowing my children will know that their mother will be a part of their lives for many more years to come because of what I did for her.”

The living donor paired exchange registry is a partnership between Canadian Blood Services and transplant programs across the country.