When Manuel Reyna developed a deadly kidney disease, his sister, Florinda Gotcher, didn’t hesitate to give him one of her kidneys. When she found out they were a match, she cried. “She was so happy,” remembers Gotcher’s daughter, Melinda Williams. “She was overwhelmed that she was able to save her brother’s life.” Williams said her mother didn’t worry about the risks of surgery. Statistically, kidney donor surgery is considered to be very safe: in 2010, the year before Gotcher’s surgery, 6,276 people donated a kidney, and none of them died within 30 days of the surgery.
