April is Donate Life Month, and while Colorado has one of the highest rates of organ donors in the country, with 62% of people registered, nearly 2,000 Coloradans are still on the waiting list for a transplant. Across the country, more than 100,000 people are waiting for a transplant.
Julia Renz is a junior at the University of Colorado who is spreading awareness about organ donation. She says she remembers spending a lot of time at the hospital growing up, which included waiting for her own heart transplant.
She’s currently finishing up a busy school year as a triple major on the honor roll.
“I go to my lab, I read my operant behavioral experiments, I go to class,” Renz said, “Neuroscience club, my organ donation club…”
Renz says she’s the only student in her organ donation club, which she is now the president of, that has received a transplant. She helps organize speakers and events to continue advocating for organ donation.
“Seeing someone who they can sort of, you know, connect with who is their peer, it really helped, like, you know, solidify the importance of organ donation to a lot of people,” Renz said.
Julia was born with an enlarged heart and received her first transplant at 4 years old.
“I remember, like, you know, running down through the hallways of the hospital,” Renz said.
When Renz was 17, her body started rejecting that heart and she had to come back for a second one.
“For my second transplant, you know, I remember every detail of that. I remember the struggle,” Renz said.
But eventually she found a second match and went through the journey with Heart Transplant Nurse Practitioner Christine Reed by her side at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
“When she got her second offer, there was so much excitement and hope in that room, and you just want to harness that for every patient,” Reed said.
Reed hopes that more patients consider becoming donors to help some of the thousands of patients like Renz.
“That energy is infectious, and so it’s very inspiring to see her have gone through something so difficult, not once, but twice, and she’s living her dream,” Reed said.
Part of that dream includes sharing her story alongside goals of obtaining a doctorate in neuroscience and leading with her heart. Renz and Reed also emphasized how important it is to recognize the donor families in these scenarios as well and that tough journey that can also help so many.
“If I were to wake up every single day wondering ‘Is today the day I wake up with rejection?’ I’d never get anything done,” Renz said, “Instead, I just go in with a mindset of, ‘What can I do today? How can I make the world a little bit of a better place today?’”
