One of the Facebook pages I read had an appeal for a kidney donor for a soldier who lost one kidney to injury and now the other to illness

Obviously I am empathetic to such situations but at the same time I wonder about the donation process. I understand there is no out of pocket cost (IE the hospital does not charge the donor) but you are also likely to be out of work for some time.

So unless you have a ton of sick leave you are likely to run into financial trouble pretty quickly.

The law does not allow people to be paid for donations (and for good reason) so what are you to do if you want to help but also need to eat and pay rent ?

Certainly some people may be in a position where a spouse also works so you can afford the short term drop but it still an interesting problem. You can’t have a situation where people are paid for the donation itself but I would think the financial issues would eliminate many possible donors.