Mom donates kidney to ‘pay it forward’ after daughter’s transplant

TIFFIN, Iowa (KCRG/Gray News) - An Iowa mother is recovering from donating her kidney in an effort to “pay it forward” after her own daughter received a life-changing organ donation.

Living organ donations are a serious, detailed and lengthy process, but for Amber Herring, it was the least she could do to help save a life in the same way she says her daughter’s life was saved.

Daylea Herring, 12, hardly remembers her liver transplant from eight years ago, but she does know she’s thankful.

“I just remember I was in the hospital and seeing my family,” Daylea told KCRG. “It makes me happy because there’s nice people in the world that are nice enough to do that.”

Her mom remembers almost every detail from that time.

“She had been diagnosed with that liver disease shortly after she was born. So, when I got her in my foster home, I had known that she had the liver disease and that transplant was likely going to happen,” Herring said.

After Daylea’s transplant, Herring says becoming a living organ donor herself became an obvious choice.

“She would not be who she is today without that donation. So, the reason I wanted to donate was to kind of pay it forward and to hopefully give somebody else that same second chance at life and not only honor Daylea’s donor but all of the other organ donors out there,” Herring said.

But as she went through the process, she wasn’t certain on who she should donate to.

“There’s just such a huge need that I had so much pressure trying to decide how I would pick one person, and so I took that off of my chest,” Herring said.

In the end, Herring decided to donate randomly, just as her daughter received a random donation eight years ago.

More than 100,000 people are currently waiting for organ transplants, according to Donate Life. For more information on the living organ donation process, click here.

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