Kidneys.... part 4

I got the call earlier this week that I am overall healthy and I am a good candidate to donate a kidney! Woo Hoo! Good news!

I've passed the first round of tests and on to the next hurdle.

I will meet with a kidney transplant surgeon and then undergo a CT scan of my kidneys. This will tell them if I have 2 kidneys (not everyone does); whether they appear to be healthy; and which one is a good option for removal.

I am so looking forward to this!

More to come...

kidneys, part 3?....

tomorrow morning I meet with the psychiatrist for Univ. of WA Medical Center. This is part of the drill. I'm not really sure what the whole appointment will entail, but it should be interesting. Maybe they want to make sure that I'm not being pressured by a family member or friend, to donate.

But since this is an anonymous donation on my part this is a moot point. Or is it???

I completed some of my testing this week. I collected my urine again for a 24 hour period. I didn't quite fill the one-gallon container like I did last week, but that's ok. I'm curious to see what happens next.

I find this whole process fascinating. But what I find the most fascinating is people's reactions. Most everyone I tell that I am going to be an anonymous, altruistic donor - they look at me like I'm crazy. Either that or their first question is .... WHY? ARE? YOU? DOING? THIS?

Or... what happens if your remaining kidney fails? That's like asking, what if you develop cancer... eventually. I mean, none of us knows what is going to happen in the future. I could be in a car accident tomorrow and be killed. Or I could live to be 105 years old, with no health problems.

I choose to live in the here and now and not worry about the future...

On death & dying...

The big part of this new path in my life is volunteering. Because I have to work to support myself, I have to pick carefully what I want to get involved in. The next step on my recently discovered path is that I hope to volunteer with Hospice. My training will be in July and I hope to start on this road in late summer/early fall.

When I went to the interview last week she asked me why... Why do I want to volunteer with Hospice?

The simple answer for me is that I don't fear death. While I don't look forward to it, I see it as the next step in our evolution. I read a quote in a newsletter from a wildlife sanctuary I donate $ to in Mississippi something along the lines of "we helped Tiger (an animal who has passed on) over the rainbow bridge". That phrase to me spoke volumes about how I feel about the act of dying. It's not about going into the great unknown, I don't believe in hell - it's all about taking the next step.

It's also not about me, not about what I want to focus on, but rather about helping this person in their last stages of life. If I can give comfort or compassion, if I can make it easier for someone to get to a place of acceptance about their very short future, then that will be of tremendous satisfaction to me.

The bottom line for me though is ... it's time for me to give back. I've been so fortunate in my life - it's time to share.

A vision...

Since deciding to give away a kidney (God willing) I have had a recurring vision. I've had visions before, I usually pay close attention to them. They are important and mean a lot to me.

In this vision I'm walking a path and on another nearly parallel path is another person. The other person is not clear to me, but more nebulous. I know he/she is there but I can't tell if it is a man or woman, younger, older, I'm not sure.

We are walking these nearly parallel paths which will eventually intersect. The intersection is the point at which I give this person my kidney. The other person is the kidney recipient.

I hope this one comes true.

My kidneys...

It has been a couple of weeks since my initial testing to be a kidney donor. Since then I haven't worked out once, a couple of reasons. But mostly because I cannot work out (except for swimming) until I do my 2 24 hour urine collection test.

I started my 1st test this morning. I have to pee into a cup for 24 hours and save all my urine in a 1 gallon holder they gave me. This is kind of gross. Go get the gallon container out of the fridge, pee into the cup, then transfer it to the container. My absurd thought was that someone might mistake the container for....?? Ewww!

I will take it to the lab at Valley General Hospital tomorrow morning for analysis.

My TB test was also negative as I knew it would be. My appointment for the Transplant psychiatrist was rescheduled to June 18th.

More to follow...

Hurtful Things

A couple of significant incidents happened in my life that have made long lasting impressions on me. In the last couple of months, my perceptions of these incidents has changed.

#1 - When I was younger my older brother used to call me Amazon Woman. I took that to be a very negative thing - that I was large.

Now when I was 18, I was 5'10" tall and about 145 pounds, I wore a size 12 pants and a size 10 shoe. If pictures are seen of me, I'm slim, fit and looking pretty good. I played basketball in high school and skied every winter from 11 years old on. Since that time I'm still active, working out between 4-6 days a week. But I've also put on weight. From the time I had my son at 27 I've gained and lost the same weight until now I weigh between 190 and 195.

After lots of soul searching, I'm ok with my weight.

Back to my original thought. I guess I've always been sensitive about my size, I'm the tallest woman in my family. Plus my family used to call me "big boned". True I have a large frame, but when I was a teenager... I was not overweight. And I've always been quite the klutz, running into things, I bruise easily, I'm always in a rush and miscalculate where the door frame is apparently.

So when my brother called me Amazon Woman it hurt tremendously and has lasted in my mind for 44 years. I can correlate so many instances of feeling low self-esteem to those comments.

But now I'm starting to see those comments in a different light. The phrase Amazon refers to women warriors in the Roman Empire. Fierce, courageous,fighting women. Attached is a link to the Wikipedia definition... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons.

I've started to think of myself in a totally different way. What a relief.

The second incident happened at my last job. I worked in a male dominated industry. I was the 4th female project manager at my company, all the rest were men. I worked there for nearly 5 years. I loved my job, all the field guys treated me great, I got along well with our engineers and other co-workers. The problem I ran into was the higher ups. They treated the female PM's as if they were not worth nearly as much as the men. And my perception of my immediate boss... well, he wasn't the best. When my employment was terminated in July, 2003 I was devastated. I enjoyed my job and I was very good at it. All my jobs came in on time and I made the company plenty of money. I thought my immediate boss had torpedoed me.

About a month before I was terminated one of the other PM's in my group had taken over from my immediate boss - and I now realize it was his controlling attitude and my independent streak that got me canned.

It is amazing to me how your perceptions can be "off" and until you know the whole story... you could be wrong. I was.