The year of 1995 started out like any other year, but it started changing rapidly.
One day my wife and I were visiting my parent's apartment. We had not been there for a while so all my siblings were there to see us. I noticed that one of my sisters had some white blotches on her face and wondered what they were. In our family we are used to kidding around with each other, so, kidding around, I asked her what the heck all those white things were doing on her face. Well, I expected her to give me some smart-ass remark right back, but it didn’t go down that way. Instead of throwing a smart-ass remark back at me, she started crying and ran out of the apartment to her car in the parking lot. I turned to my mom and asked her what was going on. That’s when I was told that she had bad kidneys and needed to get a kidney transplant as soon as possible or she could die.
Naturally I felt pretty bad, because no one had told me anything about this, and now my sister is upset. I went out to the car to talk with her. She was still crying, but I sat down in the car with her, and we talked. I told her I was sorry for saying what I did, but I had no idea what was going on. She said that it was okay, but she didn’t know what she was going to do. Her name was on a list to receive a transplant, but that list is very long and finding a person who has a kidney that her body would not reject is difficult at best. I told her not to worry about it, I’ll give her one of my kidneys. Of course, it’s not as easy as saying that you are going to do it. There are a lot of tests that you have to go through to be sure that you are compatible. Just because you are siblings, or even a parent, doesn’t mean you will match enough to have a chance at a successful transplant. Just being accepted to be a living donor is difficult enough. She told me all this and I told her right back, don’t worry about it, we’ll match. All of this was in January of 1995.
During the last part of January and the beginning of February, I experienced something that I hope to never see again, especially with my family. I watched as my sister used one of those fluid transfer machines to put fluid into her body. She had a bag of fluids that she had to put in her body every 4 hours. This process is called peritoneal dialysis. She had a tube in her stomach that she connected to a tube on the machine. These fluids would clean her blood and help her get rid of waste. She was able to use this type of procedure because she was still physically able to work. The fluid was cold, but if she was near a microwave, she could heat it up for a few seconds to make it warm. If she wasn’t close, then she had to transfer it cold. It was saddening and pretty icky too. It was better than the 2 alternatives: blood transfer at hospital every 3 days or death. Here is a link to learn more about Peritoneal dialysis.
In February we had enough of the paperwork done with her doctor (he had most of it ready and waiting to fill in the name of the donor) and with her husband’s insurance for me to go to the hospital and get tested. Being such an important procedure, we were to go to Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, a hospital suggested by her doctor, and they accepted the insurance we were using.
We made our trip there, about 150 miles, and found the clinic to get the tests done. Before we went in, she had to do another fluid transfer. This one was ickier than normal because we were not close to a microwave and had to transfer it cold, in the back of the van. It made goose bumps rise on her skin, mine too.
When we got inside the clinic, we had more paperwork to fill out, then it was time for the tests. I was a bit nervous because of the unknown factor, but also because I was afraid they would not accept me as a donor, because I was overweight. Turns out that they would prefer to have someone with less fat, but I wasn’t that much overweight. When it came time to start the tests, I had no idea what I was in store for.