WOMAN’S POST HELPS CONNECT PATIENT, KIDNEY DONOR
Liza Porat glanced at her phone while sitting in her car at a stoplight and saw the request posted on an Internet mailing list for her Silver Spring, Md., neighborhood. “Needed,” it read, “A kidney for a 41-year-old New York woman.”
Porat, a 57-year-old mother of five and lawyer, drove on, and at the next stoplight, she quickly responded: Sure, she’d be willing to go through dozens of tests and procedures, travel, put her work on hold — at times — and see if she was a match.
So began her monthslong process to donate a kid ney to a stranger with the help of Chaya Lipschutz, who runs a website called KidneyMitzvah. Despite the Jewish reference in her website, Lipschutz says she helps people of all races and religions. From her apartment in Brooklyn, Lipschutz — a 65-year-old former secretary for a nonprofit — posts notices for kidney and liver patients in need of new organs and success stories of donors who’ve given.
She started her work in 2005 after she donated a kidney to a stranger. With no staff and no budget, Lipschutz uses Internet mailing lists and online groups to donors and recipients. She’s helped about 70 people navigate the donor and recipient process.
“When a match goes through, that’s my reward. This is the greatest happiness in the world,” Lipschutz said
While there are many organizations and people who try to help link organ donors and recipients, those who’ve worked with Lipschutz said she’s unique: She charges no fees and brings a lot of energy and a caring spirit.
Porat says she didn’t know anything about Lipschutz until she spotted the post for Marianna Ilyasova on the mailing list.
Ilyasova, a college professor who also has a tax service business, had been suffering with kidney failure for five years and was doing dialysis several times a week.
She’d heard about Lipschutz through a friend and asked her to post a message she had written.
Porat read the message. It was her birthday, and her closest childhood friend had recently received a new kidney.
She and Ilyasova underwent transplant surgery in October. They’re both doing well after the surgery.