Local grandmother donates kidney to save stranger's life

By Kay Quinn

KSDK -- Would you give your kidney to a stranger? At this moment, 85,000 people are still waiting for a donor; waiting for someone like Linda Russell.

Like most women her age, Russell is enjoying retirement. If she's not in the kitchen baking, you'll likely find her spending time with family.

So when her daughter-in-law, a transplant nurse at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington D.C., came to visit, what started as small-talk about organ donation prompted Russell to make a big decision.

"I said, 'Do you mean that I have an extra kidney? A kidney I really don't use? And she said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'I'll donate it,'" Russell said. "Of course she was thrown aback by it because it was a conversation that just took on a life of its own."

With no specific recipient in mind, Russell became the rarest type of donor. In 2009, only 75 others have agreed to donate a kidney to a total stranger.

"There are a few people in the society who say, 'Okay, I've taken so much from the society I've got to give back,'" said Dr. Surendra Schenoy, a transplant surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

The medical community calls them altruistic donors. To someone living on dialysis, they're heroes.

"None of us has any guarantees in life. I don't know what's going to happen down the road, I have no idea," Russell said. "But on the other hand, I'm going to hang onto that just on the off-chance that I need it? That's wrong. When someone needs it now, that person on dialysis is likely to die, no. I mean, that's a reality right now."

Russell was selected as part of a large exchange program, matching seven donors and recipients from all over the country. Even as surgery loomed, Russell's faith in her decision didn't waiver.

"I was asked before it was done, if she was sitting here, what would you say to her? And I couldn't answer," Russell said. "I thought, I don't know what I could say to her that she doesn't already know: life is precious, you get a second chance isn't that great, make sure you live every day fully? I think she actually reminded me of that."

Days later, Russell met the stranger she'll now have a connection to forever.

"It was a little awkward when we met, just because she kept saying, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'"

Before the surgery, Oluermi Adetosoye was just a mom from Washington D.C., a kidney dialysis patient who was waiting like so many others. Now, Russell said they have an unbreakable bond.

"She's just so happy. And she's so thankful to have another chance at life," Russell said.

A life saved by an organ donor, a regular, everyday grandmother from Missouri. For Russell, it was less about courage and more about a calling.

"When you say, 'Yes,' when you feel called to do something, regardless of how risky that seems or how certain that seems, and you just give that or you surrender that and say, 'Okay, I'll do it,'" she said. "And then you see what happens afterward, you see the benefit of that, it just makes you realize what's important in life."