HULL, MA, ISSUED June 21, 2024…Some people who own seasonal businesses here in Massachusetts might opt to spend their off-season months in Florida, taking a break from the New England winter weather.
But not Jodi Elliott. The Hull resident, and owner of Mosquito Joe of Braintree-Weymouth, used her off-season time very differently. She donated a kidney to a total stranger.
She recalls watching the Today show, where she saw a feature about a man, Mark Scotch, who with his wife were donating kidneys – and it made her aware of the great need.
“That’s what prompted me to get involved,” she said. I went on the computer and looked up kidney donations.’ Three days later I was giving blood, and the process began.” She was originally scheduled to have the surgery several days earlier but a storm caused the team to delay, for fear that the kidney might not be able to be transported to its recipient in time.
Her journey took her to Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. She needed to plan a three-week window of time, plus several months for recovery. As it turned out, the hospital took her on February 15; she was in the hospital one day and came home the following day.
She worked with the National Kidney Foundation to accomplish the donation. There were many tests, including multiple blood and urine tests, PET scans, X-Rays and more. “At the end of this, it was to determine if I was healthy enough to do this, and I got the thumbs up.”
She said that the recovery progress went very well: home the next day, up and about that week, and working from home by week two. By the third week, she was back to work just as the season at Mosquito Joe’s was beginning. “I had to be careful to avoid lifting anything too heavy for a while,” she said.
Elliott doesn’t know who the recipient is, but she does know that donating a kidney to a stranger is not common. Only about 300 people donate to strangers a year while there are 90,000 people on a waiting list to receive a kidney.“I wanted to make a difference,” she said “I’m glad to have done this. We need to do more as a society.”
The experience led her to become an advocate for a potential piece of legislation that will help the situation. The “End Kidney Deaths Act” is a proposed 10 year pilot program that will provide a $50,000 refundable tax credit allocated over 5 years for Americans who donate their kidneys to a stranger at the top of the kidney waitlist in order to greatly increase the supply of living kidney transplants. All donors who donate kidneys to strangers will receive a $10,000 a year tax credit for five years.
The proponents estimate that by year ten of the act, if passed, society would save 100,000 American lives.
For Jodi’s situation, she received several vouchers that could be used by members of her family, should they ever need a transplant.
“When you think of the sacrifice of a couple of weeks of your life, it puts everything into perspective,” she said. Originally members of her family had objections to her donating, because of the worries about the risks. But she added, “My hope is to inspire others to consider donating. My fiancée is actually considering donating a kidney now himself.”
To learn more about the process of donating a kidney, contact Jodi Elliott at (508) 415-6069 or emailjelliott@mosquitojoe.com. To learn more about the National Kidney Foundation, please visithttps://www.kidney.org/offices/nkf-serving-new-england
To reach Jodi Elliott: 781-848-6212 or jelliott@mosquitojoe.com
