After Donating a Kidney, Out Pol Brian Sims Encourages Organ Donor Registration

Pennsylvania Democrat Brian Sims shared an empowering series of social media posts this past week that said he had shared a dinner with the man to whom he donated a kidney last year, Pink News reports. He was joined at the dinner with his parents whom, he explained, were making their first visit to see Sims since his surgery last year. Also at the dinner was the donor's husband. "Families come in all shapes and sizes. Ours is pretty special," Sims wrote on Twitter.

Sims shared in a later tweet that he had also seen the recipient, Alan, and his husband, John, while he was "walking through the city to my office". He described the two men as a "perfectly normal, healthy, happy couple sitting in the sun enjoying each other's company".

"It was perfection!" Sims wrote.

"In a follow-up post on Facebook, Brian Sims wrote the men 'held back tears' and 'just tried to enjoy the "normalcy'"of days that are truly a gift'," adds Pink News.

Sims was the first openly gay legislator to be elected in Pennsylvania in 2012. He is currently running for lieutenant governor. Sims revealed in May 2020 that he had donated a kidney to a gay man named Alan earlier that year. Sims turned out to be a near-perfect match. After the operation, Sims said that Alan "began to improve almost immediately and his long term prognosis is strong". Sims said the donation was never "supposed to be public" because "people are cynical, especially about politics".

At the time of the operation Sims only shared news of it to friends and family. Then earlier this year he went public encouraging others to become living donors in a video. In the tweet he wrote: "I'm teaming up with DonateLifePA to challenge all of us to support organ & tissue donation. It was just a year ago that I had the honor of donating a kidney to a neighbor in renal failure & the donation changed both of our lives."

He explained how COVID-19 had impacted organ donor registration. Then on Friday, May 14, he tweeted: "Donation has never been safer or more needed! One person donating can save up to 8 lives & living donors have a special opportunity to extend the lives of their loved ones and neighbors! Check out @DonateLife to learn more!"