Organ Donation Chronicle - D Minus 12

I had a nice few days in Chicago working with our clients and doing planning with Lakeview and Ricardo. Had a couple of nice dinners; one with Lakeview and Ricardo described on Lakeview's site, the other with daughter Motherrocker and husband John the Armenian at a place called Sola. Hopefully MR will write more details but we were very impressed with the quality and the price, especially the reasonable wine prices.

Now to continue my story about the decision to donate my kidney

Part Four

The Wait And The Call To Action

The wait began in the early fall of 2006. Through first part of 2007 the thought of doing the donation went into the background. There was nothing my sister or I could do. Her condition needed to run its course. To a certain degree it was if it never happened. I couldn’t plan for it so I went forward with my life. Every once and a while someone would ask or Wife and I would bring it up but for the most part it became a non-issue.

Then in the summer of 2007, my sister gave me the news that her kidneys were again failing. My sister is not the subtlest person in the world. Her words were that we could schedule the donation surgery again. I nearly blew up telling here I couldn’t just up and do this that I had to plan things out to ensure the minimal disruption to my business and our financial well-being. Wife in the interim had suggested that maybe there was a chance of a non-living donor being available. I know this upset my sister a lot. She was very apologetic about how she had delivered the news and asked if I had changed my mind. I did take a few days to reflect and no, I had not chanced my mind. This was something I still felt was important for me to do.

I needn’t have bothered with my explosion. Because of the time that had elapsed they (the hospital) were starting the process of approving her for a transplant all over again. During the hiatus, there had been a complete turnover of the personnel who were the coordinators for the recipient and the donor. So both of us were dealing with new people that we had no prior contact with. In addition these people seemed very inexperienced and to my mind very bureaucratic.

My sister went through another round of screening and there was serious concern on the part of the hospital after her psychological examination. They asked her to get an outside opinion. I’m not sure what the issue was but I can extrapolate that they were concerned about her ability to follow through on all the requirements following the receipt of the organ donation.

While all this was going on, we are waiting and wondering because the hospital refused to talk to us. There position was until my sister was officially approved, there was no authorization to talk to a donor. I was livid. What about my life? Didn’t my needs enter into the equation? I needed to talk to them. I needed to tell them that I couldn’t just drop what I was doing and run and donate my kidney. My business was at a critical point and I had to plan for my absence. We wanted to do the donation in December when business was always slow. I tried to explain all this to my sister so she would understand but in reality she was caught up in the system too.