(WLUK) — A De Pere woman is preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro later this year to raise awareness about life after donating an organ.
Stacey Klemp, a kidney donor, is joining 15 others on the climb in the African nation of Tanzania. The journey celebrates World Kidney Day, which is in March. The goal of the climb is to demonstrate that living organ donors can accomplish any physical challenge that could be achieved by a person with, say, two kidneys.
A De Pere woman is preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro later this year to raise awareness about life after donating an organ. (WLUK)
“I’ve seen the impact kidney donation can have. Both my kidney recipient and the child who received my voucher have had their lives completely changed for the better, and I’m living my life just as active and healthy as I was prior to donation,” Klemp said. “It’s one thing to tell people that living donation doesn’t negatively impact the donor, but another to actually show them, which is why I’m taking this message all the way to Africa.”
In 2023, FOX 11 told viewers the story of four-year old Greyson Neubauer. At just days old, doctors determined he had Denys-drash syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, and was in need of a kidney.
Klemp said she saw our story, and a day after she read it, she applied to be a living donor for Neubauer. After months and months of evaluation, Klemp learned she wasn’t a direct match for the little boy, but she chose to enter the exchange program, donating her kidney to someone else and giving Greyson a voucher for one of his own.
In January 2024, Klemp donated her kidney to a person in Utah. Neubauer was then given a voucher and put on the recipient registry himself.
“Once he was listed, it took five days for them to find his match,” said Neubauer’s mom, Katie Rusch. Without the voucher, she added, “It could have been years before we would have been able to get a kidney for him.”
“Living donation wasn’t even on my radar prior to reading your article. You taking the time to write that piece truly changed my life and those that received kidneys as a result of it,” Klemp said. “I’m hoping to share this story and hopefully inspire as many people as possible to consider living donation.”
She added, “I’m excited to show that living donation is not a limitation to your life. That you can do things. I mean, I’m gonna be climbing a mountain, but it’s not something that’s gonna hold you back.”
Currently, there are over 100,000 people on the waiting list in the United States in need of a kidney. With an average wait time of three to five years for a transplant, 17 of them die every day. Increasing the number of living donations would significantly reduce the number of unnecessary deaths from kidney failure, as kidneys from living donors last, on average, 50% longer than those from deceased donors.
The March climb will be the sixth One Kidney Climb, following in the footsteps of the success of the 2022 and 2024 climbs summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro, the 2023 and 2025 climbs over three volcanoes taking place in Guatemala and the first domestic hike across the Grand Canyon in 2025.
The climbers are all members of the nonprofit Kidney Donor Athletes, founded in 2018.
More information about living kidney donation and Kidney Donor Athletes can be found kidneydonorathlete.org and on the KDA YouTube channel.
