Once my doctor began treating my kidney disease, my greatest challenge was the constant exhaustion. Fortunately, my doctor explained that anemia was causing my exhaustion and that people with serious illnesses, like kidney disease, may be at increased risk for anemia.
If I would have listened to other people back in 2000 telling me I should have stopped playing basketball because of a kidney disease, I wouldn't have won a world championship.
I moved to Harvard in 1998, and in 2000 the first kidney exchange in the United States was done at a hospital nearby. I started to think, 'Gee, there might be a way where I could help organize it, make it easier for people to find kidneys.'
A lot of people are surprised economists are assisting with kidney exchanges. Exchanges are what economists are good at.
Often people expect I have some touching personal story about kidney disease, but it's actually the mathematics that led me to it.
When you're doing kidney transplants, you have to find out who can exchange kidneys with whom, doing blood tests to make sure it's true. You can't just work on the preliminary data. Then you have to organize the logistics.
As I wrote about my childhood, I realized that there was no big tragedy. Being multiethnic is not a tragedy. I didn't have any big life-threatening illnesses, no tumors, no kidney malfunctions... I came from a very poor family. I was chubby as a kid.
I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.
Don't forget my new kidney is a foreign object. My body attacks it. So I have to take these anti-rejection drugs to stop my body winning.
Obviously I tell myself I'm more than happy for everything that's been given to me. But if I wake up one morning and my kidney decides 'I don't fancy it today', I'm back to square one.
