Brady Seeks Kidney Donor For Mentor

By Delores Handy
Jan 27, 2012, 3:23 PM
1 Comments

BOSTON — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is using the limelight of the Super Bowl to appeal for help for a man who has been his mentor since he was a kid.

Brady and his mentor, Tom Martinez (Facebook)

Tom Martinez is a quarterback coach who lives in California. He’s mentored Brady since No. 12 was a young boy and continues to advise him. Now it’s Brady’s turn to help Martinez. The 66-year-old needs a kidney transplant because of life-threatening complications from diabetes.

“He wants to play for five or six more years, so if I can get a kidney and live that long, then I’ll be able to go to Boston more times,” Martinez said.

Because of his poor health, Martinez has not been able to come back East to work with Brady since last fall.

The Pats quarterback is using his Facebook page to ask potential donors to come forward. (Don’t have a Facebook account? Here’s the link Brady’s circulating.)

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Anonymous

It’s really disturbing to me how media outlets and journalists are reporting this story with no thought to what Mr. Brady is asking. A kidney is not a pint of blood. In fact, 4.4 LKDs die each yr in the US every yr within 12 months of donating. 20% experience complications; 20-30% suffer from depression, anxiety, grief, anger and PTSD. Yet not a single transplant center offers structured aftercare or support services.

We have NO national standards of living donor evaluation, selection or treatment, meaning that each of the 200+ transplant centers in the US make up their own rules and are accountable to no one.

We have NO short or long-term data on living donors health and well-being. The first living kidney donor transplant was done in 1954; no identifying info was collected on LDs until 1994, leaving the fate of 40 yrs of LDs completely unknown. In 2000, the Sec of Health mandated one yr of follow-up on all LDs (2 yrs as of 2006), yet 30% are still reported ‘lost’ by one yr with no indication contact was attempted. In 2009, OPTN’s own data task force called the database ‘woefully inadequate’ and ‘useless’ for research or analysis. Yet no transplant center has been penalized for not complying with this federal order.

If Mr. Brady is so concerned for his mentor, he should offer one of his own kidneys. If he isn’t a match, they could participate in a swap or chain. But Mr. Brady won’t, because it would endanger is football career. However, he expects someone else to make that sacrifice for him.

The public are not medical supply. Living donors are people too.

http://www.livingdonor101.com