60 people participated in a chain of 30 kidney donations spanning the United States.
Last February, after learning that the desk clerk at the Riverside, California yoga studio he attended had donated a kidney to a friend, Rick Ruzzamenti was so taken with his acquaintance’s story that he decided to do the same thing for a perfect stranger.
Ruzzamenti’s altruistic donation was the first link in what would become the longest continuous chain of kidney transplants in the world, known as Chain 124. After Ruzzamenti donated a kidney, the organ recipient’s niece, who hadn’t been a match for her uncle, gifted her own kidney to a stranger in need. In total, 29 recipients’ loved ones gave their own kidneys to patients who had undergone kidney failure awaiting transplants, who had been judged as good matches for the organs.
The final link in the chain was Donald C. Terry, who didn’t have a family member who could donate an organ, and had been told that he was likely to remain on the donation waiting list for five years.
Though Terry was unable to pay the donation forward, he was chosen to receive a transplant because another “Good Samaritan” had previously donated an organ at his hospital, starting a previous donation chain.
Terry was concerned that he was bringing an end to the chain. “Is it going to continue?” he asked his doctor, John Milner, according to The New York Times. “I don’t want to be the reason to stop anything.”
No, the doctor said. “This chain ends, but another one begins.”
Read the full story at the New York Times.