Utah Jazz basketball player Greg Ostertag, who donated one of his kidneys to his sister, made several television appearances this week to tell would-be living kidney donors that there is nothing to worry about.

"It's not as scary as everyone made it out to be," Ostertag said on CNN. "I was in an operating room for 2 1/2 hours, I went to sleep, and that's all there was. The nurses bothered me a lot when I was trying to sleep, but other than that, everything went really well. . . . I would tell people, 'Don't be afraid.'"

The 29-year-old Ostertag had the kidney removed at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas where it was transplanted into his sister Amy Hall, a diabetic whose own kidneys failed three months ago. (See earlier Transplant Week story).

Ostertag said it would be another month and a half before he can "get back into heavy workouts and stuff like that. But at the end -- at the end of this month, I'm supposed to be able to start doing some cardio and some light lifting and stuff like that. And then hopefully, you know, by the end of August, I'll be able to pick it up a little more and everything says I should be able to start training camp when we start up."

Ostertag said he believed the transplant won't affect his play in the National Basketball Association. "I have to make sure there's no trauma to the other kidney, but it shouldn't be a problem," he said. "Most of the contact in the NBA is in the upper body. There probably may be a freak elbow once in a while, but it's not something I'm going to worry about."

Other sources: CNN, ABC