Thinking of donating a kidney? Here’s what to expect.

Kidney donor Quincy Ponvert’s final medical appointment before surgery started with a series of questions:

Is anyone pressuring you or coercing you to donate? Has anyone offered you money to donate? Why do you want to donate a kidney to someone you don’t know?

Satisfied with the answers, a physician assistant at the Penn Transplant Institute proceeded to tell Ponvert what to expect.

“The plan is to take your left kidney,” Penn’s Mary Cate Wilhelm told Ponvert, while looking over a checklist on a computer terminal inside a small exam room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Ponvert took notes.

Transplant doctors prefer the left kidney because the blood vessels on that side are longer and therefore easier to implant, Wilhelm explained.

“Awesome. That’s the one I was hoping for,” Ponvert said, smiling slightly. “I’m not myself Jewish, but I hear that the Talmud [Jewish teaching] says something about, ‘Your right kidney whispers good thoughts to you and the left whispers bad thoughts.’”

Ponvert also learned that after removal, their kidney would be “taking a plane ride to Minnesota,” Wilhelm said, where a recipient would be waiting. The organ would be tracked via GPS throughout the trip.

Ponvert, a 24-year-old from Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood, decided to apply to become a donor after graduating from Swarthmore College last May, inspired by the example of a close friend.

“I had a sort of moral checking in with myself about how I could do good in the world,” Ponvert said.

» READ MORE: It’s illegal to pay people for organs, but some advocates want a $50,000 tax credit for kidneys

It took months to get approved as a donor. Ponvert’s medical evaluation included blood and tissue tests, a psychological evaluation, and a family health history review.

Most would-be donors are disqualified, according to Penn. “We want to make sure that we’re not taking a kidney out of someone who has a higher than average risk of having kidney problems down the line,” said Matthew Levine, the Penn transplant surgeon who removed Ponvert’s kidney on May 14.

Transplants are most successful when they involve a living donor like Ponvert. Kidneys from living donors function twice as long as those removed from a deceased donor.

Ponvert became a rare “altruistic donor” by offering a kidney to a complete stranger. To encourage more to step forward, the federally funded programs that oversee organ waitlists will bump donors like Ponvert to the top of the transplant waitlist if they ever need a kidney. The National Kidney Registry also will give altruistic donors a voucher to help a friend or relative get a kidney quickly should they need one at a later time.

Ponvert donated through the registry’s Family Voucher Program, which provides up to five vouchers for family members who would get priority on the organ waitlist if they ever needed a kidney.

» READ MORE: This South Jersey woman donated her kidney to a stranger for her 28th birthday

During Ponvert’s preoperative appointment, Wilhelm went over the risks: Three kidney donors out of 10,000 will die from the surgery, an exceedingly low .03% risk of death for a major surgery.

Penn hasn’t had a single death, and only 5% of kidney donors suffer complications, such as injury to a nearby organ, incision infection, or a hernia, according to Wilhelm.

Ponvert’s surgery, which is largely laparoscopic, took about three hours, followed by a few nights in the hospital. A catheter tube was inserted into the bladder during surgery; it’s removed within 24 hours.

Doctors expect Ponvert to fully recover within six weeks. During those weeks, doctors don’t want Ponvert to lift, pull, or push anything, such as a lawn mower, that weighs more than 10 pounds. The only restriction after recovery is that Ponvert should not take certain pain relievers, such as Motrin or Advil, because they affect kidney function.

Ponvert planned to take two weeks off from work as a grants administrator for a nonprofit organization and hoped to read a few novels while recovering. “It will be a good opportunity to have not that much to do,” Ponvert said.