Waiting, again

I'm stuck thinking about the waiting...if it's this hard for me..what must it be like to know part of your body is dying. And there is hope for a new part, somewhere out there. And you can't get to it yet. Not that it isn't offered, but there are so many hurdles to be jumped first. What is it like to wake every morning, wondering how well you body, your kidneys are going to do today. Will they function ok, will they get worse. How will you feel? Tired? Or just unwell? and how long will this drag on...and the biggest fear I think is, will I wind up on dialysis? and what will that do to my body.

Strangely, there was a book about my favorite topic, The Camino de Santiago de Compostella, called "Fumbling" by Kerry Egan. I'd wanted the book for sometime, even before we hiked the Camino Portuguese to Santiago. But, as luck would have it, I didn't get a copy of the book until just last month. In it, Ms. Egan describes how she deals (or rather doesn't) deal with her fathers death, from diabetes and kidney failure. She describes in graphic detail some of the side effects of the dialysis, esp. the bodies inability to handle phosphorus and the granules that form under/on the skin. The skin becomes a method for the body to excrete minerals and other waste since the kidneys aren't working and dialysis can only do so much. It's not pretty.

It leaves me wondering what must V be thinking and fearing. What do all transplant patients feel as they sit and wait, hoping and praying. Hoping someone will step up to the plate and say, test me. Hoping someone will allow Dr's to turn off the machines keeping a loved one alive, even if that "life" itself is no longer there. Hoping someone will allow parts from that loved ones body to be taken and allow another life to go on.

The happy/sad part is that today so many donations aren't made. For one very simple reason, medicine has come so far in recent years, that many accident victims who would have been donors, now simply walk out of the hospital. Wonderful for them, but it adds to the growing list of sick people for whom organs are desperately needed.

So for now, V and I wait. For more tests, for more Dr. appts, for more samples, blood, urine, patience!