May 30th was our 10th kidneyversary. ‘What’s that?’ you ask. Well, I’ll tell you!
My late husband, Darryl, had kidney failure in March 2012 due to sickle cell disease; so he went on dialysis. For months, he taught 6th grade during the day and then went to dialysis every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 6:00-10:00 pm. The schedule was rigid and grueling. To miss a session could be life-threatening. In his poem about it, “Measuring in Liters,” he wrote,
The two lizard-teeth punctures in my arm and
an ephemeral sadness picture-framing my wife’s
eyes every time I go.
He was right. I didn’t accept that this would be his life. I knew I had to do something. I stayed up watching YouTube videos to learn. The waiting list for a kidney transplant was several years long and the only way to bypass it was to find your own donor. (People can live with one healthy kidney, so you can have a living donor.) The donor’s and recipient’s blood has to match – and no one in Darryl’s family was available. I knew there was no way that Darryl and I would be a match – our ancestors are from entirely different parts of the world. But then I found out that there are these incredible databases where as long as you found someone willing to donate, the doctors would pair you with someone who would be an actual match. In other words, I could donate to a stranger, and that would ensure that Darryl would get a kidney.
The next job was convincing Darryl to let me find out if I was eligible – that was the hardest part. I told him, “Just let me find out. There’s no way we will be a match. But at least this way you can stop going to dialysis and get off of the list.”
So he relented, and I called up Cornell. First, they determined that my kidney was healthy. Then they gave us each blood test and mixed our blood together to see what would happen. He didn’t reject me. Then they did it again. Still no rejection. And again. By some miracle of fate, we were a match.
I was no altruist. I was simply trying to save my marriage. Someone asked me, “Do you know what the risk is if you do this?” I responded, “Do you know what the risk is if I don’t??” My view was that we had 2 working kidneys between us, so let’s make it work.
And so, on May 30, 2013, the surgeons took my left kidney and gave it to Darryl. It was a miracle. No more dialysis. I’m not going to say the next few years were easy – they weren’t, physically or emotionally. Living with a transplanted organ requires a lot of monitoring and a whole regimen of anti-rejection drugs. But there’s no question that he lived longer and better than he would have if he’d stayed on dialysis. He got to see his daughter get through graduate school and find her community and start her career. We got to travel again. We literally deepened our connection – and we got to laugh together for 7 more years.
And last week, when I was binge-watching videos about Tina Tuner, I found out that she too, had a kidney transplant. And she, too, got her kidney from her husband, Ervin (not Ike!).
You never know what someone is going through. And you never know when life will throw you an opportunity to do some good in this world.
To commemorate our 10th kidneyversary, I got new license plates. If you see me driving around town, give me a toot to say hi!