On kidneys and scarcity

This could be news to you…or you could have seen the posts from my dear friends. Either way, your friend Julie is scheduled to donate a kidney in April.

Painting from the transplant waiting room

As you might imagine, I have lots of feelings. And lots of thoughts. I’ve wondered how to talk about this, how to share. It has felt like the elephant in the room in most conversations - the enormous interruption to a full year followed by a three month (!) rest before traveling for work again this summer. It’s a lot.

And it’s been a beautiful miracle to watch and embody.

I hate admitting this, but I think I have a bent towards scarcity. I am almost always afraid of not having enough.

But maybe I need to be more clear on that. I’m deeply, enormously, brazenly full of faith that there is more than enough for everyone else - just ask me to pray for anything and see. I believe God for the impossible for anyone and everyone else, but I’m often terrified there won’t be enough for me. Not enough time, not enough friends, not enough money, not enough years with my sweet goldendoodle, not enough strength and courage for my work, not enough words to describe its importance, not enough fortitude to stand strong if/when it gets really hard. I really could go on an on. The clearest example of this might be my Amazon wish list filled with (literally) no less than 50 books I’d like to read alongside random gadgets that Instagram suggested that I do (really and truly) believe might just change my life. Or it could be the prayerlessness with which I often wrestle. Why ask, after all, if there won’t be enough?

The one thing I feel I have had more than enough of is pokes to my body.

I’ve been known to argue with the ER doctor in the middle of an anaphylactic reaction that I didn’t really need the IV (he did not agree, nor acquiesce to my request to just wait a little longer). I’ve passed out giving blood, utterly lost my cool, and wept like a little, little girl more times than I can count. If you need an advocate in the hospital, I’m ready to roll…but if I’m the patient, it’s lights out.

But when I saw that my friend needed a kidney, I really didn’t think twice. I filled out the form and got a call the next day from a donor advocate and we were off.

Waiting…can you tell how much I had been crying this day?

Mid-January is when it really hit the fan. I went in for an entire day of testing that began with them drawing TWENTY tubes of blood. You’re reading that correctly. No scarcity of pokes that day.

As a note: bless your medical professionals whenever and as often as you can. Sweet Sarah was so kind to me. I had wept in the parking lot before coming into the hospital. But truly…I had pulled myself together. Then she introduced herself to me and explained what was coming, and I burst into tears all over again. She looked me straight in the eyes and said “I’m really good at this.” I kept sobbing while she drew the tubes (through TWO worship songs that she let me play, mind you), but she was true to her word, indeed excellent at her craft.

I proceeded to get a chest X-ray, CT scan of my abdomen, and be interviewed by the hospital transplant team in shifts.

At the end of all of this, they told me that I have the same blood type as my recipient and was likely a match. I burst into tears AGAIN and went to meet with the surgeon for my last appointment of the day.

It wouldn’t be until after two more blood draws and a matching test coordinated by the National Kidney Foundation that we’d receive the final answer just two weeks ago. I was indeed a match and the whole medical team at my recipient’s hospital had approved the match. Surgery is set for April 4th. But be not dismayed…I still have two more blood draws to go. Sigh.

All in all, I’m not sure I’ll ever know how much money all of this has cost - it is all covered by insurance and the system…but it’s been astounding to me to observe. They can spend all of this money, run all of the tests, but they cannot replicate what my kidney can do for my friend. There is no device, no gadget to be placed on my wishlist.

The only way is to say yes.

I told some friends last week about the upcoming surgery, and one of them listened with the most furrowed brow as I told the short story. As soon as I finished, he said “wait, wait, wait…do you have more than one kidney?”

I laughed really long and hard as I assured him.

Yes. I have two.

Some might even say…plenty.

It’s quite a miracle. I literally bear in my body the opposite of scarcity. I contain at present…plenty. I hold more than enough in my very frame.

As the weeks and months come and go…I’ll have much to say about all of this. Jesus has been teaching me a lot in this whole process.

But for tonight. Sitting on my rented apartment porch, looking out over a chilly, Texas spring evening sunset with my sweet Lincoln…I’m going to take deep breaths in this two-kidney body. I’m going to let my questions be shadowed by the peek of bright coral peeking past the sun as it goes to sleep for the evening. I’m choosing to believe that in all the remaining places of ache, in all my barrenness, in all my weakness, there might just actually be hidden plenty.

Sure would love your prayers for your friend Julie and my dear friend Mike. Plenty more to come…