• Live donors a special breed, and researchers want to know why
*Ronny, a woman in her 50s, cannot recall exactly what spurred her on to be a non-directed organ donor (someone with no connection with the recipient).
She says she is the sort of person who wakes up every day feeling "happy and excited to be alive" and one day she wondered how she could share that feeling with someone who might wake up daily feeling miserable.
A couple of weeks later she considered the possibility of a kidney donation.
Ronny, who works in the hospitality industry, has no connections with anyone who has had kidney disease, nor does she have religious convictions.
She researched the subject, and discussed it thoroughly with her husband and then-teenaged son.
"I realised it was going to impact on them as well."
It was difficult for a child to cope with a parent undergoing surgery which in this case was optional and not necessary.
Once the family had reached the stage where the idea had "integrated itself" into their thinking, she approached her GP and was referred to Dunedin Hospital nephrologist Dr John Schollum.
He, and all of the people she encountered at the transplant unit in Christchurch, had been exemplary in their approach.
At any stage she had the opportunity to withdraw from the process.
She was satisfied that there was a rigorous ethical process and she was pleased with the anonymity of it.
"I love walking down the street thinking that I might have passed the person.
"I love that.
"I get a tingle in my spine at the thought of that."
There was no "emotional baggage" attached to giving to a stranger in the way that there might be in donating to someone you knew.
"I'm not being falsely humble, but it truly was not a big deal."
She also appreciated the fact there was no money involved - "I love the freeness of it."
The operation was completed about 15 months after her original thought.
There had been pain and discomfort after the surgery, but she had expected that.
She took about six weeks off work.
"I knew it [pain] was going to end.
"Things that end are so much easier to deal with.
"I have respect for those people who have chronic illness and have to find some semblance of normality.
"I don't know how they do it.
"I'm impatient if I have a cold for more than two days."
Since the operation, she has been spreading the word about being a live donor, including in her role as a "dummy patient" for medical students.
She had yet to find a medical student who had previously known it was possible - "I educate two more people every time I do it."
In her work she knew that her interactions, positive or negative, had the impact to change a person's day and she chose to be positive.
Donating the kidney was just an extension of that - "It's a bigger change, but it supports what I already believe."
*Ronny is not the woman's real name. She has not been identified in accordance with the protocols surrounding the non-directed donor programme. She is one of 18 donors taking part in research into the experiences of non-directed donors.
