(WTAQ-WLUK) — A De Pere woman is preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro later this year.
Stacey Klemp, a kidney donor, is joining 15 other people on the climb in the African nation of Tanzania. The climb celebrates World Kidney Day, which is in March. The goal of the climbers is to demonstrate that living organ donors can accomplish any physical challenge that could be achieved by a person with two kidneys.
“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,” she 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, 4-year old Greyson Neubauer was in need of a kidney. At just days old, doctors determined he had Denys-drash syndrome, a rare genetic disorder.
Klemp said she saw Greyson’s story and the next day she applied to be a living donor for Greyson.
After months months of evaluation, she learned she wasn’t a direct match for Neubauer, but 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 someone in Utah. Six days later, with a voucher in hand, Neubauer was matched with a direct donor through national registry. Neubauer had his transplant surgery in April 2024.
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.
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