A former Marine Park councilman is turning to social media to find a donor for a kidney transplant.
Lew Fidler, who represented the area in the Council for 12 years, announced in a Facebook post last week that he needs a transplant — and quickly.
“I need a kidney transplant as soon as possible,” he wrote. “Please help me search for an altruistic donor by sharing this post and encouraging your FB friends to do the same.”
Fidler suffered kidney failure in 2012 after suffering a severe allergic reaction to a prescription medication, and has been on dialysis ever since. The thrice-weekly treatment can take a heavy toll on the body — especially the heart — so the 58-year-old former politician decided to seek a transplant.
Fidler has been on the organ transplant waiting list since the spring of 2013, but the average wait for a matching kidney harvested from a deceased donor is three to five years, and could be much longer.
So Fidler turned to Renewal, a Borough Park-based organization that helps match kidney patients with living donors.
“They assist you in reaching out and they assist anyone who is interested in donating to anybody,” Fidler said, adding that if a prospective donor doesn’t match his A-positive blood type, the donor could volunteer to help someone else. “If they’re not a match for me, they will be matched to someone else in the Renewal database.”
Fidler said that donating a kidney should not be taken lightly, but stressed that the surgery is not debilitating and recovery is swift.
“Kidney donation, while it is certainly a lot more than giving a pint of blood, it’s not a horrendous ordeal for the donor,” he said. “The donor is usually able to get back to work pretty quickly.”
The response to Fidler’s appeal so far has been supportive, he said, one solicitation he received made him want to reiterate that he is looking for an altruistic donation offered purely from the goodness of the donor’s heart.
“Someone called me the other day and started talking to me about buying a kidney in India or China — it just struck me as so uncivilized,” he said. “People selling parts of their body — that, to me, is just not right.”
Renewal [5904 13th Ave. between 59th and 60th streets, (718) 431–9831, www.life-renewal.org].
