I Donated a Kidney to my Tinder Match (part 2)
[continued from part 1]
That evening at my boyfriend’s house, I elaborated on the call with Mayo. I’d told him on our trip about tossing my hat in the donor ring, that it seemed like it might be a long shot but I wanted to try anyway. His reaction matched the few other friends and family I’d shared my plans with, a mixture of surprise and concern, maybe a bit of awe.
“It was kind of crazy, she was just so matter of fact about it?” I continued chopping vegetables for stir fry while recalling my conversation with the donor coordinator. “Like, a little excitement I guess but she was just like, very procedural, you know?” I paused to give each dog a small piece of carrot.
“Kind of like how you’re being?” He said it with raised eyebrows, the wrinkles of his forehead pairing with a crinkling near his eyes when the teasing smile eventually broke. We were still new enough to each other that I felt his worry as a protective, loving kind of emotion, one that meant he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. That seemed natural, expected even. I returned his worried affection with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then returned to chopping.
I was still working through my own feelings about going under the knife willingly for something that would leave me no better than I was before it, that in actuality had a decent chance of really harming me. But I figured as long as I didn’t die or need a live-in caretaker forever, it wasn’t much of a concern for anybody else. It was my kidney, I could do what I wanted with it.
After dinner that night I booked my flight to Jacksonville for the next round of testing, forwarding the itinerary to my coordinator so she could schedule all the necessary in-person appointments. My boyfriend marked the trip on his calendar, agreeing to watch my dogs while I was gone, and I fell asleep excited at the idea of being able to help my friend.
The Mayo Clinic building is glinted and pristine, more of a palace than a medical facility. As I turned to give my little sister a hug as thanks for the ride, the support, the distraction of the last few days, a man in a sharp, oppressively warm looking suit tried to open the locked car door for me. He smiled and waved. “Francis,” according to the shiny name tag on his chest.
Mel recently moved to St Petersburg, just across the Floridian peninsula, and it was a nice bonus to get to visit her in her new home before taking on the intensive organ donor screening. We’re close enough, as far as sisters who live on opposite coasts go, with frictioning personalities that for the most part sum out to net positive. She’s also just as, if not more, unemotive as I am, which offered a needed relief from the increased barrage of “Are you sure you want to do this?” I was getting back home. All she needed to know was when my first appointment was, and how many different breweries and burrito joints we could visit before then.
I squeezed my strongest, surest goodbye in hug form, and pushed open the car door to Francis’s choreographed welcome, better suited for one of the vacation resorts down the street. A wave of frail patients rolled by in wheelchairs as I closed the car door, scarves on their heads and a note of sadness hiding beneath their kind smiles. Mel waved through the open window before slowly driving off, leaving me standing there next to Francis. My health felt pretentious, like I was rubbing it in everyone’s faces by just standing there on my own two feet. I declined his hand for help and walked in towards check in.
That whole week I went from appointment to appointment, getting poked and prodded and scanned to gauge my suitability for donation. During one of the early blood draws, the phlebotomist commented on the number of vials being pulled for my orders. Unlike back home where any mention of organ donation got met with wide eyes, I figured it was safe to talk about here. They have a whole transplant department, specializing in living donation of kidneys and livers, and I must be one of dozens in the building at that moment who was somewhere along that process. As she stickered the two dozen vials with my information, I told her my reason for my being there. She stopped what she was doing and clasped my cold hand that was still recovering from the tourniquet with both of hers.
“What a wonderful thing to do. What a gift.” She held my gaze a moment longer than my hand, then opened the curtain to send me on my way to my next appointment.
A big part of not telling many people about my plan was the undue praise that came with it. I hadn’t done anything other than offer to try yet! What if I wasn’t able to donate after all? What if I could and decided to bail? I hadn’t given any gifts yet, and didn’t want to be heralded for anything I didn’t deserve. I also didn’t want to jinx it.
So I held my tongue from anyone else who didn’t need to know, letting a chest x-ray be just a chest x-ray, an EKG a simple inquiry of my ticker, the one that’d been described as steely and cold from the few who’d tried cracking into it.
But then there was the transplant team, the donor coordinators and nurses and surgeons who made this their daily routine. The perfect mix of “you’re doing a great thing” and “alright chop chop we’ve got someone else coming in after you.” I appreciated their methodicalness and lack of hoorah, it made the whole ordeal feel normal, safe. Those were the appointments that really made me excited for what could be.
I flew home after a week of bopping between Mayo and Ross’s place, working remotely from my laptop for an understanding boss and checking in with my boyfriend who was also growing into understanding. All of the boxes were checked, the results of every scan and study — everything from kidney filtration to family health history to a psychiatric evaluation — waiting for the transplant board to review.
On August 27th, two and a half weeks after leaving Florida, I got the call that I had been approved. My well-functioning, single artery, single vein, single ureter, 11 centimeter left kidney had gotten the green light from the transplant team.
Waiting for that call had been the hardest part of the process so far, but once I had final clearance from the team it felt like smooth sailing. I made travel arrangements, requested additional time off work, created a living will, and forwarded my parents a copy of the Healthcare Power of Attorney paperwork that had their names listed on it. Checkmarks on the to do list tallied up with a systematic ease, despite their seeming like really big deals on the surface. My boyfriend lent a supportive hand when needed, even offering to take the ten days off work and be my primary caretaker while in Florida for the operation. He said all the right things, but still with a little hint of hesitation that I couldn’t put my finger on. As we got closer and closer the uneasiness grew louder, impossible to ignore or chalk up to the simple unknowing of how things might turn out. While waiting for tacos at his neighborhood food truck one warm, late Fall night, his true emotions finally spilled over, catching me off guard. My reaction was, perhaps, not ideal.
“Hold on — I don’t understand how you’re not happy for me. Or proud. Or anything positive, really. Why are you upset?! What do you have against this??” My disbelief was genuine, and met with frustration, like it was painfully obvious what was going on and he was annoyed at having to spell it out for me.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I’m scared you’re going to die!” Flew from his lips before he caught himself, pausing to collect his thoughts. “Surgery is no joke and you’re being so casual about it. It just freaks me out.” I set down my beer and put my hand on his arm, finally aware of his true fear and feeling guilty for not realizing my matter of fact approach had put him in this difficult emotional situation. “Also I just know you’ll never do anything for me as big as what you’re doing for Ross, and it really hurts knowing I’m not the most important person in your life.” My hand recoiled back to the glass, the softness in my heart suddenly a swarm of irritated bees.
“You’re… jealous? You’re jealous that my friend is near end-stage renal failure and needs an organ to stay alive, and you’re upset that I want to help him?” The swarm found a soft spot to attack. “What, do you want it instead? Do you want to go see if they’ll give you my kidney instead of Ross? Maybe I have a different organ you can have to make it even!” A young Mexican woman dropped a paper plate of tacos in front of us, an unnecessarily large stack of napkins next to it.
The surgery was only a few weeks away, and I couldn’t believe that this hadn’t come up in all of the conversations we’d had through the whole process — Waiting for test results, weighing options, talking through timelines. Booking the flights, taking the call from Mayo about his role as caretaker. Not that they were decisions we made together, but he was there for them.
I realized that through all of this, that little glimmer of uncertainty I kept feeling from him wasn’t what it seemed like. It wasn’t just about the threat to my health, but the threat of my friendship with Ross to our relationship. That I was willing to give someone an organ but hadn’t figured out yet how to give him my whole heart.
It wasn’t fair to rely on him for this huge life experience, one that would undoubtedly bond us together even tighter, knowing I was never going to be able to meet his asking price for love. That he would spend all of our time feeling shorted by the heart that Mayo had deemed perfectly functional, in the ways they understood it, and I would feel indebted to the sacrifices he made for it. Without a shred of an idea for a caretaker contingency plan, I called it off between us.
Visions of needing to reschedule or cancel the donation planted themselves on the inner edge of my periphery while I scrambled to make new arrangements. I changed my flight and begged United for an exception to their no refund policy for my ex’s. Mel agreed to fill in as caretaker without batting an eye. As secondary plans fell into place I felt an odd, reassuring sense of calm. Not just about the breakup, but about the procedure. It was all going to be alright. Better off, even.
The majority of my decision making was in consideration of the physical implications of the procedure. It wasn’t until that night at the taco truck that I really saw how the mental and emotional aspects — pieces that were neatly folded in with the physical, on my end — were weighing on the people around me.
Anna was one of those people, one of the few who knew of my plans, even now that everything was a go. When I told her the news about the break up and we began attempting to unpack my ex’s feelings about the donation, I was shocked to hear her leaning towards his side of the vote.
“Yeah, well, it is really scary! I don’t want anything to happen to you either!” She took an audible sigh, the release of the weight of that confession opening up space for the next one to come steamrolling through. “Obviously he had other insecurities and shit going on that I don’t understand, but I do get his frustration with your nonchalance about it.” Another sigh, a look of apology in her eyes overtop the beer bottle she’d just tipped to her lips. We’d just finished a mountain bike ride and were dangling our feet from the tailgate while catching up. There were only a few more opportunities for this before I went under the knife, and after that I’d be out of commission for at least six weeks. As long as everything went to plan, that is. “I just don’t want you to have any regrets afterwards.” I batted away the fleeting vision of never being able to share a post-ride beer again.
But there it was, the piece I wasn’t letting myself really consider, the question mark I kept dodging that kept clarity and peace in my decision. The research said I’d be back to my total normal self after just a few months, and would lead a perfectly typical life afterwards, however I wanted that to look. But of course it wasn’t guaranteed. Anna made me see that my lack of acknowledgement of that risk was bubbling a secondhand worry in the people who really cared about me, like they needed to shoulder that emotional piece if I was going to refuse to acknowledge it.
At the risk of sounding completely contrarian to the practical, black-and-white person who made all of these plans, the one who took comfort in stats and science saying it would be ok, I also just thought that if I believed it would all work out, that it would. That I’d be back to bikes and beers in no time and that Ross wouldn’t have to go through dialysis and his parents wouldn’t have to worry about planning a funeral. That maybe you can’t manifest a surgical outcome or positive attitude your way through a life-and-death situation, but that taking a confident, peaceful body into that hospital seemed like the last piece that I could control, so I planned to.
Looking out towards the trail we’d just hooted and hollered our way down, watching the sun run down the tips of the tall ponderosas that filled the forest that held some of my most cherished able-bodied memories, I tightened my grip on my decision. I’d give Ross a kidney, and I’d be back out here in no time.
In my heart I knew I was doing a good thing, something that would hopefully have a big impact on someone I cared about. That even if something did go wrong, I’d be at peace knowing it was at the hands of a good deed. I finished my beer and gave Anna an oversized hug to let her know I appreciated her honesty, friendship, and time out on these trails. And then one more to say we’d be doing it again soon.
So a few weeks later as they started my anesthesia drip and began wheeling me back to surgery, I smiled and waved to my younger sister, whose shaky voice and teary eyes I chose not to see, and tried my best to will a best case scenario into existence.
[continued in part 3]
