With a lot of effort, my husband, Dave Galbenski, was able to make April 11, 2023 the first annual “National Living Donor Day”. In 2019, he became a grateful living donor liver transplant recipient after years of fighting a rare autoimmune disease called PSC. This was possible when our brother-in-law, Mark Dybis, became his living donor. Now we all want to spread the word about this life saving procedure. In 2022, there were 603 living donor liver transplants across the U.S. or about 6% of all liver transplants. In a similar fashion, there were 5,863 living donor kidney transplants in 2022 comprising approximately 23% of kidney transplants in the U.S. If these numbers keep growing, everyone that needs a liver or kidney transplant could get one.
In the above photo, Dave and Mark teamed up with the Detroit Lions and Henry Ford Health System to help promote living donor liver transplant. If you’d like to know more about National Living Donor Day or how living donation works, read more here.