Crestline Team Member Gives Selfless Gift

It is easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. We have gifts to purchase and wrap, travel plans and prepping for guests. With all the activities, many of us lose sight of the true heart of the season: giving.

Recently, you may have received an email from us regarding a team member’s absence. Our operations director, M.K, was out on medical leave for a month this fall. What you perhaps didn’t know is that M.K. chose to have a very serious procedure. He underwent surgery at John Hopkins to remove one of his kidneys in order to donate it to someone in need.

MK King – Lead Transportation Specialist

If you ask him why, this is the response you’ll get: “Sadly, the average wait on the list for a kidney can be five years — or more when you have a rare blood type. I happen to have that very rare blood type — B negative. This made my decision even more important. And while I thought I was already doing my part by declaring my intentions to be an organ donor (on the back of my driver’s license), I now see our nation’s organ shortage cannot rely on deceased donation alone.”

Through living donation, a healthy person can donate one of their kidneys while they are still living! Living donors also allow those in need to circumvent the need for dialysis, which can be extremely hard on the body. Kidneys from living donors also offer a number of superior benefits, from greater success rates to nearly double the years of function. Living donors not only help those in need get a healthy “living” kidney when they need one, they also prevent those in need from getting sicker (or dying) while they wait.

Living donors like M.K. who don’t know the recipient and simply want to make a donation out of selfless motives are considered non-directed. These types of donations are also called anonymous, altruistic, altruistic stranger and stranger-to-stranger donors.

We are incredibly proud to have a man like M.K. on our team. His selfless nature is admirable and he truly represents what the Christmas season is all about. We are proud to say that he is fully recovered and back in operation at Crestline, and there was also a successful outcome for the recipient.