The Golden Thread

that connects us all

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

Knife in hand
mouth drawn tight
he slits me open,
beginning to gut me 
with his surgeon’s precision.

On the table, I lay dreaming 
of a golden thread that escapes 
through the slit and snakes through the air— 
slowly first before beginning to fly.

In my drugged vision, all I see is the sliver  
of light lengthening as the spool spins.  
It uncoils for hours until worry that the thread is
too short begins to tug in my mind and then— 
it stops.
The steady thread of light is stretched now,
comfortably taunt and thrumming with energy.

Putting his serious tools down,
the surgeon gently plucks 
the cord and leans forward 
listening for the pitch.
“Sounds good, sew him up” he says
to the resident as he walks out 
with my kidney in a cooler.

Weeks later, I am back in my life
with only the scars to tell
of what happened, and only the  
soft, singing hum of the string to 
remind me where it went. 

_written February 3 2026

Credit to my dear friend, Julie Ludwig for sharing this image of a golden thread with me when we did a community kidney sending party a couple weeks before my surgery.

I’ve been thinking about this poem for a long time and still feel like it will need another edit or two, but I wanted to share it this week as a way to speak about my experience of donating my left kidney about 4.5 years ago since Friday is National Organ Donation Day.

I was inspired to donate after hearing one of my high school friends talk about donating her kidney to a co-worker. She shared how straightforward it had been and that her life pretty much went back to normal after the donation. I thought, “Wait, you can just give up an organ and then go back to living your life!?” Then I started noticing all the signs on the backs of vehicles or online campaigns making pleas for individuals who need a kidney. Over 100,000 people are on the kidney transplant wait-list in the US and nearly 3,000 in Canada.

I started doing a bit of research and found that because such extensive testing is done on donors, if you are deemed to be a good candidate for donation, your likelihood of long-term complications are very low. But there is some increased risk of having kidney issues as a result of donating— my risk of getting kidney disease at some point in my life doubled— from 1% to 2% chance. In general, most of the risk of donating has to do with the impacts associated with having a surgery rather than losing a kidney. The recovery of the surgery is similar to a C-section (or so I am told), but without needing to care for a newborn baby while you recover.

After getting tested, I found out I was a strong candidate to donate and entered into a non-directed donation program in Vancouver, Canada where I was living at the time. I happened to be a really good match for an individual in Montreal. The person who got my kidney actually had a willing donor, but that donor and the recipient were not compatible. The potential donor in Montreal agreed to donate to someone else for whom they were a match as long as their friend or family member got a kidney. It was basically like give a penny, take a penny. In the end, at least two people got kidneys including one person who was waiting on a list with no potential donors. The doctors wouldn’t tell me how long the donation chain ended up being, but sometimes these donation chains can be 3-5 people long with each person giving a kidney to a complete stranger.

Donating was hands down one of the most interesting and meaningful experiences of my life. I know this would be a very big deal for some of you reading this, but for me it really was not a hard decision and did not feel like a sacrifice. It just felt like a common sense thing to do if I could do it safely. That being said, I’m not squeamish about medical stuff, I had paid time off work to recover, all medical bills were covered, and my remaining kidney picked up the slack leaving me at about 70% of my original very strong kidney function. Some of that was luck and some of it was privilege that I could donate so easily. But if not for the scars, I would have no indication in my daily life that I only have one kidney.

And what I received back from the experience was immense. Being able to give a life-saving gift felt so connecting. What is more connecting than the fact that I can share a piece of my body to keep your body alive? The experience so clearly and powerfully blurred the borders of where I end and “the other” begins. And in this moment where Power would have us forget we are one Body, we must remember the golden threads that connect us all even when those threads are invisible and the energy thrumming in them is often hard to hear.

If hearing my story piques your interest in donation, let me know! I love talking about this and would happily answer any questions you may have. You can find out more about becoming a living donor in the US here and in Canada here.