Woman Donates Kidney to Stranger to Save Her Mother

Dyamond Lindsey’s mother is in desperate need of a new kidney, so the 21-year-old is donating hers… to a complete stranger.

Sonja Lindsey, a 46-year-old mother of four from Lansing, was put on the waiting list for a kidney transplant after being diagnosed with high blood pressure and kidney failure in December 2014. She thought she simply had the flu, but quickly learned her condition was far worse. She has been on dialysis ever since.

Her daughter, Dyamond Lindsey, wanted to donate her kidney to mother, but testing quickly revealed she was not a compatible match.

That’s when the two decided to join Advocate Christ Medical Center’s paired kidney donor exchange program, which allows a recipient and living donor, who are not a compatible match, to be matched with another donor and recipient to exchange kidneys.

Dyamond Lindsey donated her kidney to a total stranger in San Antonio, Texas so that her mother would in turn receive a kidney from another mismatched donor.

The three-way, same-day kidney exchange was completed Thursday, with three donors and three recipients at two hospitals.

Dyamond’s kidney was given to a San Antonio recipient. Her mother then received a kidney from another San Antonio donor, whose loved one in turn received a kidney from a third donor in San Antonio.

“This is an excellent way to increase living donor transplantion, as it allows incompatible donors to still make transplant possible for their loved one and shorten the patient’s time on the transplant [sic] waiting list and on dialysis,” Dr. Deepak Mital, surgical director of kidney transplant with the Organ Transplant Center at Christ Medical Center, said in a statement.

According to Mital, all donors and recipients are recovering and doing well. Dyamond Lindsey was discharged from Advocate Christ Medical Center the day after her donor surgery, and her mother, Sonja, is expected to be released Monday.

“The gift my daughter gave me means the world to me because she was willing to help save my life,” Sojna Lindsey said in a statement. “I gave her life and in turn, she gave me back my life. I’m forever humbly grateful for what my daughter did.”

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