THE DECISION
5.23.13

Just a few weeks ago Kelsey and I celebrated our six month anniversary of this whole ball of wax that I've bored you with throughout these pee papers posts. I hope you don't walk away like, 'well that was 90-minutes of my life I'll never get back' (sorta like the way we all felt after watching Howard the Duck or any of the Superman sequels.)  And if it really took you 90-minutes to get through this, you read too slow.

As my final post I wanted to share the beginning: The decision, which most are curious about.  Or not. I'm not an individual who shares a ton of feels, and I make light of all the 'it was meant to be' stuff that people spout regularly on Facebook (then break up with their soul mate 37-days later), but when I received an e-mail from Molly in January of 2011 updating close friends and family with Kelsey's condition and the impending transplant we all new was coming, a wave of heat raced through me and I knew it was time to make the offer that had been cataloged in the back of my mind for many years. Due to the highly personal and emotional nature of what was being shared, I figured the best way to discuss this was obviously......in an e-mail.  Actually it was for the best as none of us needed to bawl in front of each other as it'd take us like 3-hours to have a 5-minute conversation.  As soon as I scribed my feelings and desire to help and pressed the send button, it felt like a done deal.  My kidney no longer belonged to me.  Then I thought, "really, what are the chances that **I**, just a casual, unrelated simpleton would be a match?

But this was my journey and I knew it.

It all started with a call to the transplant coordinator at Stanford. Gerri James is a killer transplant coordinator.  Not that I have ever known any transplant coordinators.  But I'd rank her at the top of her field from my vantage point.  Just like someone who has never snowboarded would see me ride and think I should be on the US Olympic snowboarding team.  **She TOTALLY slayed that bunny hill and didn't fall ONCE!**  Anyway, Gerri really is top shelf.  She mailed me a blood draw kit, which I made the rounds with begging Las Vegas blood centers and hospitals to poke me and which none of them would.  Some hospital mumbo jumbo about networks and "they just don't do that."  My desire to help was met with red tape at every turn.  Molly sits on the board of a local hospital here so she called in a favor and the blood was on its way to the testing facility at Stanford. (*plug for Southern Hills Hospital here*)  About a 10-days later I received a voice mail from Gerri to call her back.  My heart about dropped as my biggest fear was that she was going to tell me I wasn't a match.  

But I WAS.  (and my nephrologist was surprised how great of a match I actually was.)

I know many family members would have LOVED to have been Kelsey's donor but the blood had to be a compatible match, which wasn't the case for them.  My universal O+ was the winning ticket!

Then came the rest of the testing, which involved going to Stanford for two days and getting worked up one side and down the other in addition to scaring the total crud out of my parents who tagged along.  Every doctor I met with did everything they could to frighten me, yet the only thing they could come up with is, "This is surgery.  You could DIE."  Yeah.  I almost die at least 3 times a week already.  But would this affect me health-wise?  No.  Are there things I shouldn't do after donating?  Tackle football and getting drunk.  K - Taking those off the bucket list.  Will this, in any way, have a negative impact on my quality of life?  Nope. 

No one was ever able to give me a solid reason why not.

I do have to admit that the worst part of the experience was the multiple mental health professionals I had to meet with to ensure I was not insane for wanting to offer a body part to someone who was not a blood relative. I met with two in Las Vegas; the first one should have been committed herself, and the second was a very in-depth interview of my childhood, family, relationships, work, sports and the rest of the stuff covered in cobwebs in my brain.  Fast forward 18-months after the first surgery was postponed and the real one was on the books for October 30th, 2012.  I flew back to Stanford for a last-minute check up to make sure everything was still hunky dory.  There, I met with two more social workers, a donor advocate and also found out that since the Las Vegas shrink wasn't Stanford-based, I had to see one there. Again.  So I scheduled to take a later flight that afternoon for what was to be a 90-minute evaluation, which was done in 15. I caught a glimpse of the final report and I think it said, "Yes, she's nuts - but she seems to understand what she's doing."  Should have gone to the drive-thru shrink in the first place. Obviously there are reasons behind this process when it comes to non-relatives, which I totally understand. One of the medical team people told me of a case a few years ago where an employee was solicited for his kidney for the boss' relative and it came out in the interview process that he was to be compensated for it.  Stanford don't play that game. But I am still waiting for my check.

Throughout this 18-month journey there wasn't one moment of hesitation or fear about my decision.**  I was cool as a cuke.  Since the beginning, there was song that continuously played in my head (to the point of annoyance) that has a line that says, "How can I see another's lack and I not share?"  My biggest fear was not following the promptings I felt and having the pain of regret every day for the next 50 years and wondering what could have been?  The thought of dying in my bed at 87 with two healthy kidneys.  And to sit on the sidelines and watch Molly try to take care of her little one after donating her own kidney....would have ripped my heart out.

(** It's true that there wasn't one moment of hesitation, however I was a total idiot and started reading blogs online about other people's donation experiences about a week before surgery, which was the worst thing in the world to do since I'm pretty sure most people only go online to whine, scare the crap out of others or troll with politics.  It's like having a sore body part then hopping on to WebMD to see what you can find.  Sixty minutes, 18 blogs, 2 medical journals, and 4 news articles later you have diagnosed yourself with a life-threatening illness and have just a few weeks to live.  

Hesitation?  No.  Nervousness.  A bit.  Would I be able to snowboard this Winter? Or ever for that matter?  Could I play soccer again? Would I even want to?  How long will it take me to be able to do a downward-facing dog again?  The very selfish, temporal things started to creep in and were manifested with dreams an incision the size of those with major weight loss going through a circumferential body lift. Yes, I watch too many surgical shows on TV. Once you start crawling through everything you can find online, you then start reading between the lines of EVERY-SINGLE-THING that happens in your life at that time looking for a sign.  My last trip to Stanford with Kelsey was on my birthday at the end of September. The morning of, I was notified that our flight was canceled. Immediately I sent a text to my bestie asking if this was a sign that I wasn't supposed to do this. The last day at work before leaving for California, I walked out of my office and shut the door.  I heard a loud crash and opened the door to find one of my favorite sayings in glass that had been sitting undisturbed in my bookshelf for 10-years broken on the ground.  Again, was someone trying to tell me something?  The moral of the story is that I freaked my own self out for a few days unnecessarily instead of remembering the 18 months of peaceful confirmation that I was doing the right thing for me and the right thing for Kelsey. I realized that God does not send us messages by disrupting the travel of hundreds of people nor will he break your favorite stuff to tell you what not to do.  Yeah.  I KNEW that.)

To sum it up, this was never really a DECISION that had to be made.  My journey started when I read that e-mail and wondered how I could see another's lack and not share of myself when I have EVERYTHING.  I have been blessed with incredible health and strength and stamina and I knew I was called to share of those gifts.  And just like a candle, lighting another candle (like using a birthday candle to light all the other candles on a cake as fast as you can before the wax melts all over the place...or maybe that's just MY cakes because I'm getting old,) the original candle does not lose one spec of light from lighting the others.  Although I'm one of those tricky trick candles that frustrate the living crap out of everyone that can't be blown out.

The morning of surg.

Gerri James - Transplant Coordinator/Slave Driver

 90 days later. With matching bangs.

Our Epilogue:  Six months later - Kelsey is doing amazing!  She looks healthy and is growing (she and I have an agreement that she will NOT get taller than me.)  I just attended her Junior High School play of Grease where she was a Pink Lady. She just got her braces off and has the most AMAZING smile.  Her levels have fluctuated, as expected, still in the normal levels post-transplant and she's scheduled to go back to Stanford next month to have a routine biopsy done of Righty to make sure it's not being a bad kid.  As for me, any nerves I had were unfounded. To the max.  Less than one week after surgery, my parents drug me over to Half Moon Bay where we walked along the beach, took pictures, and had some bad Mexican food. My expectation for being grounded for 60-90 days didn't hold water and I felt good enough to get back to soccer and the gym about 5- weeks after surgery (do not read this blog, Dr. C!)  I had my pre-surgery energy levels after just two weeks. I even went to my team's soccer game the night I got back from Stanford to cheer them on.  And since I've been back on the field, we haven't won a game. So nothing has changed.

I was able to celebrate our 90-day kidneversary with a day of heli-boarding in the Wasatch Mountains outside of Salt Lake City, which was absolutely epic... but didn't hold a birthday candle to this entire experience.