I think divine lottery is as good a description as any. My otherwise healthy 8-year-old was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis. It’s an autoimmune disease she was likely born with. She had her transplant four years later. Folks who need kidney transplants from polycystic kidney disease inherit their disease from their parents. If you listen to the podcast, you will learn Carol’s son suffered renal failure after a strept infection. For kidneys — high blood pressure, diabetes, severe overuse of NSAIDS, or use of another drug cleared by kidneys can cause failure. Many transplant patients who get a different organ (liver, heart, lung), may eventually need a kidney transplant because the immune suppressants they take for the rest of their lives are toxic to kidneys. Lung transplants are often for cystic fibrosis — which is inherited & usually diagnosed in childhood. Heart transplants can be needed for quite a number of diseases which cause heart failure.

We don’t tend to transplant stomachs. Though at the children’s hospital where my daughter had her transplant they were working on en-bloc-tranplants of the entire GI tract for kids who were born with short-gut syndrome.

It’s wise to eat a healthy diet & stay active — for one’s general health. If you have any specific concerns you should speak to your primary care physician or other specialist. I was in the business of removing good organs for transplant & plugging them into the patients who needed them. I was not on the medical side of the equation as far disease prevention was concerned. Take your medications as prescribed and keep your medical appointments for any follow-up or routine physicals. And that’s advice I’d give to anyone, anywhere — even before I was a nurse.