Ohioan searching for organ donor tapes bright message to his SUV: ‘Got kidney? I need 1’

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An Ohio man in need of a kidney donor is taking his search on the road in unusual fashion, with bright yellow letters taped to the rear window of his sport utility vehicle.

The message on Neal Raisman’s silver-blue SUV reads: “Got kidney? I need 1.” It includes a phone number for interested callers.

The Columbus Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1FTdQfk) reports a similar message is taped on an SUV belonging to Raisman’s daughter, who lives not far from her father’s home in the Columbus suburb of Bexley. They took the SUV ad approach after Raisman’s relatives were ruled out as donors because of diabetes and other medical reasons.

“If the sign doesn’t work in one way, perhaps it will in another,” said Raisman, a former college president with expertise in the written word and in marketing. “The more front-facing I can get the issue, the greater the possibility that someone will be a donor, not only for me.”

The connections between kidney patients and their donors are sometimes thin: a friend of a friend from church, an old high-school buddy reunited on Facebook or, once in a while, a stranger, said Robin Petersen-Webster, living-kidney donor co-ordinator at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.

“I’ve heard a story about a man standing on exit ramps with a sandwich board for his wife,” Petersen-Webster said.

The 67-year-old Raisman says he has heard from a few people, including one offering to sell him an organ, but there’s no matching donor yet.

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Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, http://www.dispatch.com