Nicholas Crace is no stranger to giving to
strangers. He spent most of his career directing charities that
helped the mentally ill, terminally ill, elderly and others in
need.
Finally, in late April of this year, Crace
underwent a successful surgery and headed home from the hospital
with just one kidney. He said he was elated to hear that the
anonymous recipient of his kidney, a woman in her 60s, was
recovering well.
He also gave mightily to Brigid, his wife of nearly 60 years.
After she had a stroke in 2005, he cared for her for six years
until she died in the summer of 2011 — and then he was astonished
to have time on his hands.
Crace, who lives in the village of Overton in Hampshire,
England, became a volunteer driver for a local hospice, but that
didn’t keep him busy enough. The lifelong blood donor wanted to
continue giving blood, but he was told the cut-off age for
donations was 70. He began thinking about donating his bone marrow,
but the age limit for that was even younger: 40.
What Crace did instead set records in the United Kingdom and
captured the attention of doctors on this side of the Atlantic: At
age 83, he became Britain’s oldest living kidney donor and the
country’s oldest “altruistic donor.” He opted to give a kidney to a
complete stranger.
Crace shared a detailed and thoughtful diary of his journey
toward kidney donation with TODAY.com. In it, he reflected on the
practical and emotional motives that prompted him.
“The Practical are the facts that I am fit, have no dependents
or responsibilities, am retired and have plenty of time,” Crace
wrote. “The Emotional are that I have led an easy, comfortable and
selfish life, enjoyed excellent health and want to repay some of my
good fortune.”
Crace said he realized thousands of people are waiting for a
suitable kidney, and many die while waiting.
“I couldn’t have lived with myself with the knowledge that I had
had the chance of changing someone’s life and turned it down,” he
said.
Dr. Bryan Becker, a transplant physician in Chicago and past
president of the National Kidney Foundation, described Crace’s act
as exceptional.
“It’s unusual for someone in their 80s to be a living kidney
donor,” Becker told TODAY.com. “Living donation is rare in the U.S.
even for individuals in their 70s.”
The National Kidney Foundation noted that transplants performed
from living donors have advantages over transplants from deceased
donors: A kidney from a living donor usually functions immediately,
and survival rates of living donor kidneys are higher.
“Altruistic donors are very special people,” Annabel Ferriman,
chairwoman of the British charity Give a Kidney — One’s Enough,
said in a statement. “They have the imagination to understand the
suffering that people go through on dialysis while waiting for a
transplant, and the courage and generosity to do something about
it.”
Since 2006, when an altruistic living kidney donation campaign
kicked off in the United Kingdom, nearly 100 men and women have
given healthy kidneys to people they didn’t know, Ferriman
said.
In the United States, 160 people donated kidneys anonymously
last year, and 443 donated kidneys to strangers through a paired
exchange program, according to the National Kidney Foundation.
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