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Of Kin And Kidney Transplants: Living As My Sister’s Keeper
The surgery, this tragedy, didn’t just happen to her, it happened to me too. My beautiful belly button had transformed into Frankenstein’s monster.
2008
My barrel-chested father cloaks importance with the phrase “Well, you know . . . ”
“Well, you know, we’re having the guest bedroom redone because the oak tree fell through the house.”
“Well, you know, your cousin was born with a vestigial tail.”
Like all well-conditioned animals, my siblings and I honor the subterfuge and react to his declarations with nonchalance.
“Well, you know,” he said on this particular occasion, placing a box of aluminum foil in a drawer, “Your sister’s kidney isn’t very good.”
I swayed in my fuchsia stiletto boots, my hand lightly resting on the sage green counter of my parents’ newly renovated kitchen. My sister’s renal function had been compromised but steady for at least a decade. No one, least of all her many physicians, knew what caused her disease.
“What do we know?” I asked.
“They’re sending her up to [unnamed world-renowned hospital]. They might put her on the…
