Organ Donation Chronicle - D Minus 9

Agh I'm going crazy. Let's get this thing over now! Where can I find a copy of "Kidney Transplants for Dummies." I'll just do it myself and Fedex my kidney to them.

Pant, pant, pant, pant

That's OK. I'm better now. Continuing the saga - Part Five

The Decision is Made

We watched the dance of my sister trying to deal with system going to her own psychologist and then the Hospitals and back. In the meantime the weeks and months ticked away – September, October, November. We were supposed to be spending Christmas with our daughter in Chicago but we couldn’t make any commitments or reservations because we might get the call that we can do the transplant in December. I’m balancing commitments to my associates at work. What can they expect of me? Wife, who has been so supportive, asks only one thing, that this doesn’t screw up a long planned river cruise in Europe. I keep trying to tell my sister what my restraints are that if it can’t be done December, we are going to have to wait until May.

Finally in December the call finally comes. Sister is approved. Let’s do this in late January. Explosion number two. The hospital is telling me that they only schedule these donations six weeks in advance. I talk to my coordinator and explain the situation (now that I can actually talk to someone officially), how I need time to put my affairs business and financial in order and how May is the time that I want to do the donation. The hospital agrees to my request. In the game of Hospital Bureaucracy vs de-I, it’s 5832 to 1. I’m on the scoreboard!

Of course my sister wasn’t too happy about the delay but with my assurances that I was fully committed to making the donation, she was OK about it. Just a side note for the purpose of full disclosure – my sister never once asked me to donate my kidney and I can say in all honesty that I don’t think she ever even once made the slightest implication of guilt. All she has ever shown was gratitude.