Maui resident Rachel Bennett Steury hopes her kidney donation will encourage others to consider doing the same. Photo courtesy Rachel Bennett Steury

When Maui resident Rachel Bennett Steury gave away one of her kidneys to save the life of a person she had never met before, she felt like she was helping a larger movement.

“I understand looking back at it that this isn’t something that everyone chooses to do,” she said.

“It just felt right. I felt like I was playing my part of being healthy enough and able to donate.”

She said kidney donations multiplied by many could help end the wait list. According to the National Kidney Registry, more than 90,000 people are waiting on the deceased donor kidney transplant list and more than 500,000 are on dialysis.

The National Kidney Registry said a living donor kidney lasts 20 to 40 years on average, whereas a deceased donor kidney lasts about eight to 15 years.

With a living kidney donor, outcomes can be better, although there are a lot of variables at play, including how well patients take care of themselves, the National Kidney Registry said.

In her book, “Losing My Kidney And Finding My Voice,” Steury describes her journey toward donating a kidney and hearing the stories of other donors who have had an impact on people’s lives.

Steury said she wrote the book to dispel myths about donating kidneys, including that a kidney donation affects a donor’s fitness or quality of life.

The book, “Losing My Kidney and Finding My Voice: Confessions of a Living Donor,” describes author Rachel Bennett Steury’s life leading up to her decision to become a kidney donor. Steury, who lives on Maui, said she felt like she was helping a larger movement. Photo courtesy Rachel Bennett Steury

The National Kidney Registry has an annual event featuring donor games showing the donors’ fitness, strength, agility and endurance after the donation, and expressing gratitude to donors.

“The act of donating a kidney is an enormous life-saving act of generosity, kindness and selflessness that cannot be measured,” said Timothy Jagemann, director of marketing for the National Kidney Registry.

Jagemann said through the National Kidney Registry’s voucher system, a donor can still donate on behalf of someone, despite their incompatibility as recipient.

The recipient who qualifies to be in the voucher system can redeem a voucher for a kidney somewhere from a list of potential donors on the National Kidney Registry’s list, broadening the chances of finding a compatible match.

Steury said she was motivated to donate a kidney to an unknown recipient in part because she saw a CBS news program with Katie Couric featuring dairy manager Max Zapata of Clovis, California.

Zapata donated a kidney to an unknown recipient and started a chain that involved 20 people. A surgeon described the chain as “the ultimate pay-it-forward situation.”

Steury said she was also motivated in part by her uncle Ed, a worker at a rubber mill in Indiana, who became an organ donor after his death.

“He saved the lives of five people from Indiana to Puerto Rico through organ and tissue donations,” she said. “My grandma kept his story alive through the years and shared that with me and shared that with our family.”

Author Rachel Bennett Steury is shown standing at the front of the group in this family photograph. She was inspired to become a kidney donor, in part, by her uncle Ed, who donated his organ and tissues upon his death to save several other people. Ed is in the photograph beside Steury’s grandmother Barbara and her sister Dara. Photo courtesy Rachel Bennett Steury

Queen’s Medical Center, which participates in the National Kidney Registry, said about 330 Queen’s patients are waiting for a kidney transplant. Patients on the list wait for an average of three years, compared to up to 10 at some mainland centers.

Queens and the National Kidney Registry said they follow established protocols in evaluating living donors, including comprehensive medical and psychosocial evaluations.

Steury herself fits a profile of being a hard-working, yet socially minded person.

She worked at night in an automobile parts manufacturing plant while she went to college for 10 years. She received two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree from Amherst University in Massachusetts in Labor Studies.

She said unions, particularly the steel union, have been a big part of her life imbuing her with values of social justice and community.

Steury was 35, criss-crossing the country in 2010 as a steel union advocate for the Alliance of American Manufacturing, when she saw the CBS story about living kidney donors.

She said the story affected her deeply, watching people tied to dialysis machines and knowing many of them would die before they had a kidney transplant, aware she could make a difference.

Because of the confidentiality about kidney donations, Steury said she didn’t know who was going to receive her kidney. Her operation took place in Chicago.

“All I knew is it was going to Pennsylvania,” she said. “Then someone in that guy’s life also donated a kidney to a stranger and that kidney wound up flying to Chicago and being transplanted into a guy that was right down the hall from me. I didn’t even know there was a guy down the hall at the time.”

Her doctor showed her a smart phone video of the man in Chicago who received the kidney.

“The doctor said, ‘This is the guy down the hall. He’s thanking you for saving his life,'” she recalled.

Steury said she and the man became friends and talked to each other every other month.

“The first text message I got from him were pictures of him and his wife and grandkids all sitting on a couch and him saying how fortunate he felt that he was now able to feel better and spend time with his grandkids,” she said.

Steury and her husband helped to manage a farm in Paauilo on the Big Island before moving to Maui.

Steury, who now works as a consultant in communications, said she’s become a member of an organ transplant group that meets regularly in Kahului and has joined a Team Hawaii group going to the Transplant Games of America in Denver in June.

“I’m so fortunate to have found Organ Transplant Maui where patients, recipients and care givers meet together and support each other and those on dialysis and on the wait list,” she said.

Copies of Steury’s book and more information about her may be found at bennettsteury.com.