I Was So Happy That Out of My Pain I Could Help Someone: Sophia Lemon’s Nutcracker Donation Story

I was diagnosed with Nutcracker Syndrome in March 2024, at age 19. I had been having pain for about four years and I didn’t know why.  

I had been to the hospital and multiple doctors, and most of them thought it had something to do with my childhood degenerative disc disease. I had two herniated discs and two surgeries. After the first one, the pain improved but then returned, and after the second, the pain didn’t get better.  

As young and as healthy as I was, they really didn’t think to look any further. As they say, when you hear hoofbeats, you look for a horse, not a zebra. But it sucks when you are actually a zebra and it doesn’t get caught for years.  

In April 2024, I had a left renal vein transposition (LRVT). It was fine for about three and a half months, then my lower left back pain came back. I got a venogram and they said my vein was still compressed. So I got a stent in my renal vein. That helped the pain a little bit, but it was still impacting my daily life.  

I was having pretty severe abdominal pain because I had varicose veins in my gonadal vein from the Nutcracker Syndrome, so I got a stent in my gonadal vein. After that, I got a coil in my gonadal vein. That helped significantly with my cramping and pain, but two to three months later, the abdominal pain returned even worse than before.  

I got my last stent on September 19, 2025. After that stent, the pain got worse and I just could not function. I was in college at LSU at the time, far away from my family in North Carolina, and I was trying to complete school while dealing with medical issues, and I just could not handle it.

I knew the next step would be a nephrectomy. I was very apprehensive at first, but after my third stent and my fourth implant, I thought I needed a radical change. I found LJ’s story online. I really wanted to try to donate my kidney. Discarding it would be a waste of a perfectly good organ—my kidney was perfectly healthy.

I started the donation process through the National Kidney Registry, and LJ was assigned as my donor mentor. It made me so happy to talk to someone who knew what I was going through! She told me all about donor nephrectomy. She had the same surgery that I had, the LRVT, and hers had also failed. She went right to having a nephrectomy, which I wish was an option that had been given to me.  

I’ve met a bunch of people who have had failed LRVTs. If that doesn’t work, I would suggest not getting stents. The stents I got made my donor surgery so much more complicated. Out of everyone I have talked to, I have heard of maybe one person who got a stent and it helped and they’ve had no issues. Once you get the stent in there, sometimes it can’t come out. I still have two stents in my renal vein because that vein goes to your heart, so it’s too dangerous to try to remove them. If I had known that before I got stents, I would not have done it.  

I had my donor nephrectomy on March 6, 2026. I had to have an open nephrectomy—they could not do it laparoscopically because of all the previous surgeries. I had no complications at all, which was incredibly lucky after all the surgeries I had. 

I have not had any abdominal or back pain. I have a little bit of pain where they removed the kidney, but it is nothing compared to what I was having before. A month before surgery, I wasn’t eating and it was hard to drink—putting anything near those coils was excruciatingly painful. 

Having a donor nephrectomy was the best decision I have made so far in my life. I wish I had been able to do it sooner. Being 19, no one suggests nephrectomy as your first step because it’s so radical, but I wish I’d had that option.  

I did an altruistic donation, and my kidney went to a guy in Atlanta. They had to do it at the same hospital because they weren’t sure they would be able to use the kidney. My doctor said there was only a 20% chance that they would be able to use the kidney because of how much I had put it through with my other surgeries.  

When I woke up, they said, “You’re an organ donor!” I was so happy that out of my pain I could help someone. That’s what really made me want to go this route.

About the Author

Sophia Lemon is a living kidney donor who donated to cure her Nutcracker Syndrome. She has since joined the Renal Nutcracker Syndrome Association committee and hopes to use her story and experience to advocate for living donation and spread awareness about Nutcracker Syndrome. Sophia is currently a college student studying biology and would love to work in nephrology when she gets older. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, spending time outdoors, and photographing nature. She is from North Carolina and loves living in such a gorgeous state.