Nilda Solis, 57, and her family pose with Sarah Spencer, who donated a kidney to Solis that she originally intended for her 62-year-old father.Four-year-old Nicolas Villegas kept tugging on the string of his chrome star-shaped balloon, restless in his seat while a room full of grown-ups celebrated his life-changing kidney transplant.
The chain’s seven donors had volunteered to give up one of their kidneys to help someone else. But instead of having the donors give a kidney directly to a person they knew, University Health rearranged the pool of donors and recipients to produce more compatible matches. They removed the lids from the boxes to release star-shaped, colored helium balloons — chrome for recipients and blue for donors. Tied to the gently swaying balloon strings were colored paper cutouts revealing the name of their match.
It also meant University Health’s medical team performed seven kidney transplants back-to-back in a three-week period in May and early June instead of one at a time. Rodriguez, 30, also was one of the seven donors. Like Baron and several others, she had expected to be giving her kidney to a loved one. Baron had signed up to donate a kidney to his brother, Brad Hall.Daniela Rodriguez, who donated one of her kidneys, caresses the back of son Nicolas Villegas, 4, who received a kidney last May as part of a kidney transplant chain pairing seven recipients with seven donors. Recipients and donors got to meet each other during a reveal ceremony Friday, Jan.