Kidney Snowman Helps Get Cottage Grove Man Life-Saving Transplant
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A Cottage Grove man, who earned worldwide attention while waiting for a kidney transplant, has a new organ.
Jim Gorbunow, 44, begins each day with a handful of medications. Over the course of a day, he'll take upwards of 30 pills.
But it is a welcome routine considering the life he lived not long ago.
"It's just a world of difference," Gorbunow said. "I can already feel it."
Simple tasks, like taking out the dogs, are suddenly easier after spending a year and half on the kidney transplant list.
Around 2001, early-onset diabetes got the best of his kidneys. He had a kidney transplant, but the organs started to fail again.
"I thought a lot about, you know, what is my wife is going to do?" he said. "It's scary."
But Gorbunow isn't the type to just sit around and wait, so he found a way to raise awareness for living organ donation.
He built a 5-foot-tall snow sculpture shaped like a kidney and dyed it pink.
"So many people came forward and wanted to do it and everything, but because I was a previous transplant patient, my antigens were too high for their antibodies," Gorbunow said.
In the summer months, a pink plywood organ replaced the melted snow.
Last winter, an 8-foot-tall cold weather kidney returned, and so did the volunteers ready to offer an organ.
"It restored my faith in humanity, big time," he said.
Ultimately, Gorbunow's new kidney came from a donor on the transplant list.
He says his new-found energy won't go to waste. With countless others waiting for a life-saving donation, he sees no better platform than his front yard.
He plans to build another snow sculpture promoting organ donation this winter.
"I'll do something out there and I'll do it big," Gorbunow said.
He says transplanted kidneys usually only last about 15 years. He may need another transplant in the future.
