It's not normal for a blog like this to post a link to a womans/fashion magazine, but today, that's exactly what I am doing. Yes, seriously.
The article in this week's Elle looks into how singer Selena Gomez received a kidney from best friend Francia Raisa. It takes a clear plain language approach to discussing a variety of things about kidney failure and what's involved in being a live donor.
I feel we should thank them for opening up the topic such wide audience of people.
So have a read of Elle's article (I'm linking to the UK edition, it might also be in the editions for other countries, I'm not fully up to date on my fashion magazines...)
To quote from the article:
"There is a common misconception, among people who have not had a lot of experience with kidney disease, that cadaver donation is the only pathway back to health.
Living donation isn't widely discussed in the mainstream enough for people to truly understand the ins and outs of giving someone a kidney while you're still living and breathing.
But, in fact, live kidney donation is a lot more common than you likely know, with about a third of all kidney transplants carried out in the UK coming from living donors. And you don't have to be a family member to offer someone an organ - plenty of kidney donations come from friends or non-directed altruistic kidney donations (anonymously)."
