When His Patient Couldn't Find a Kidney Donor, This Doctor Gave His: 'It's a Feeling That's Hard to Describe'

UW Health John Jartz and Dr. Aji Djamali

Dr. Aji Djamali was pacing back and forth in his living room one evening last October while talking to a former patient who has a rare blood type and was in dire need of a kidney donor.

"We were just about at the end of our conversation when I told him, 'I know someone with your blood type who might be interested in being your donor,'" Djamali informed 68-year-old John Jartz, who was facing a five-to-seven-year wait for a kidney from a cadaver donor.

The two men, who had become friends years earlier, both knew that Jartz probably wouldn't survive that long.

"Who is it?" Jartz asked excitedly.

"And that," recalls the 53-year-old physician, "is when I told him: me."

Moments later the two men were crying. "Even now, when I talk about it," says Djamali, "I get emotional."

Seven months later — on June 29 — Djamali, a nephrologist who chairs the department of medicine at Maine Medical Center Department, was wheeled into an operating room and surgeons removed his kidney. Within minutes another team went to work transplanting the organ into Jartz, who had been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease (PKD) — an inherited disorder that causes the kidneys to enlarge and stop working — seven years earlier. (The two men met when Jartz was Djamali's patient at the UW Health Transplant Center in Madison, Wisconsin.)

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For Djamali, who was back at work two days later (Jartz was discharged after five days), being able to donate an organ was the culmination of a dream that began decades earlier while in medical school.

UW Health Dr. Aji Djamali and John Jartz

"I was always in awe of people who donated organs," he says. "It fascinated me. And I soon decided that I didn't just want to talk the talk. I wanted to walk the walk."

Convincing his wife, however, was another matter. "Let's wait until the kids are grown," she told him at the time. "Then we can talk about it."

By last October, Djamali — whose three kids had graduated from college and moved out of the house — knew the time was finally right. He also knew that Jartz — who was having difficulty finding a donor with his same, rare blood type — would fare much better if he received a kidney from a live donor.

"So I talked to my wife," he recalls, "and she said, 'If you want, you can go for it, and I'll be here to support you.'"

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Looking back on the experience, Djamali struggles to find the words to properly convey what it feels like to give a part of his body to another person.

"It's a feeling that's hard to describe," he says. "It's like watching your child being born. It's just this sensation of freedom, elation and happiness."

UW Health John Jartz and Dr. Aji Djamali

But, of course, there was another reason why he did it. The veteran physician knew that the story of his actions might spur someone else to perform a similar act.

"Half of the reason was to help John," says Djamali, who is in touch with Jartz on a daily basis. "But the other reason was to encourage people to help others, to inspire them to consider stepping up and helping the 90,000-plus patients across the nation who are on waiting lists to get a transplant."

To learn more about living kidney donation, visit the Maine Transplant Program website or call the living donor program toll free at 800-870-5230.