• News

"Emotional Reunion of Kidney Donors, Recipients"

  • CBS News
  • (May 06, 2015)

Michael Griffen says he didn't realize what he was starting when he decided to help a stranger he read about on Facebook. Jamie Young needed a kidney transplant, and Griffen offered to donate one of his. He got tested and found out he wasn't a match. But Griffen didn't give up. "It was still on my mind. I couldn't shake it," he told CBS News' Marlie Hall. So he found another way to help. He donated his kidney to someone else, joining a living donor chain that resulted in Young receiving a kidney too. "He's everything to me. I love him," she said as they embraced at Mount Sinai's Transplant Living Center in New York. "I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him." CBS News brought members of their donor chain together to talk about their experiences. Living donor chains like this are key to saving more people, said Sandy Florman, MD, the director of Mount Sinai's Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute. "There are 125,000 people waiting for an organ in the U.S., and 100,000 of them are waiting for a kidney," Florman said. Learn more.