I met Carina through Trek (a legend you will meet in a few weeks closer to the end of Season 1 of the show), and he said you’ve got to have her on the show.  He was right. Born in St Croix, Virgin Islands, the youngest of 9 children, she’s a Children’s Book Author and into tech, and works with sustainable Christmas Trees.

So what is the process of kidney donation?  What did Carina have to do once she decided to get checked.  First, she had to be evaluated to be a match, which involved first basic blood typing (A positive, B negative), and then additional antigen “matches.”  Then she had a psychological evaluation, which, someone has to be competent, able to freely make this decision of sound mind, not mentally ill. And also, I imagine stable enough to handle surgery and the loss of a kidney, understand the risks, etc.  Then further testing of her own medical conditions. You wouldn’t want to transplant a kidney from someone with cancer, HIV, Hepatitis C, etc or you would be giving the recipient a new disease. She was scanned, I assume to rule out cancer. She spoke of having a reaction to contrast that is injected in the IV, the contrast helps the radiologist to see organs light up better, and mild reactions are common and not a big deal.  After appropriate psychological and medical testing, including matching, the surgery is scheduled.