LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — In 2019, Ashley Holt was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. After some time and treatments, she learned that her best option would be to get a kidney donation.
She moved to the top of the list and got a call in august, last year. She calls it her new birthday. Holt recalls, "My phone rang, and my daughter was like, 'mom you need to answer that,' and I was like, 'oh it's nobody,' and she was like, 'no it might be the call." I was like 'oh let me answer,' so I answered, and it was."
Holt is just one of 693 lives saved in 2023. It's the sixth year in a row that Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, or KODA, has surpassed records. Denisha Henry is Donate Life's multicultural community educator. She lost her daughter, T'Neil Martin, in 2010. After she and her family decided to donate, she says her daughter was able to save and change so many lives.
Henry says, "A year to the day of her heart recipients transplant. We were able to meet in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and listen to my daughter’s heartbeat. I never thought in the hospital to just put my head on her chest and so her recipient was kind enough to let me listen to her heartbeat. We've met her kidney recipients and her lung recipient."
Donate Life and KODA report that 2023 marked a 25% increase in organ donations and a 20% increase in organ transplants from the year before. Heart, kidney, liver, lung and tissue donations and transplants all increased significantly. In 2023, KODA reported 299 organ donors which meant 729 transplants. Denisha explains that most new donor sign ups happen at KYTC offices.
Henry says, "So we had over 90,000 new registration last year here in Kentucky and so our KYTC offices have been very instrumental in helping add new names to the registry." Holt shared how it felt knowing that she's one of the donations that's in breaking another record. She says, "It's a little heavy at times because I didn't know much about it until I experienced it for myself." The experience has changed her outlook.
Now, she works to spread awareness and break down stigmas around donation. She explains it's the best gift. "I share the facts and really relate it to the gift of love, and loving thy neighbor as you love yourself, and it would be the gift that keeps giving,” says Holt.
