Sandi Falconer
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Twice a year – at Christmas and in early June – I hear from a man whom I have met only once, who lives in a remote village far from my Vancouver home, but with whom I share something intimate: our kidneys. I’ve got one, he’s got the other. I’m not supposed to know this man. Protocols in the national Kidney Paired Donation program decree that donors and recipients who are strangers should remain that way.
Vern and I were part of a cross-Canada exchange involving multiple donor-recipient pairs that resulted in my daughter, Kasari, receiving a kidney from someone closer to her age and my kidney going to Vern, who is closer to my age and for whom my kidney will be a better match.
While for some, donor-recipient confidentiality in a paired kidney exchange makes perfect sense, for inquisitive people like Kasari and me (and, it turns out, Vern and his wife, Shirl), engaging in something as intimate as a kidney transplant ignites our most basic curiosity. Who is now walking around with my kidney? What kind of a person is she or he? How does she or he feel about it? How is my kidney working out for them? And who gave my daughter the incredible gift of her new kidney? I mean, this is a vital organ we’re talking about. This is shared DNA. This is important, life-altering stuff.
By putting two and two and two together and watching those shuffling the post-op corridors and the comings and goings during endless hours in post-op waiting rooms, Kasari and Shirl were able to figure out whose kidney went to whom. Because we are not supposed to know these things, they had to be tentative, discreet and sensitive to signals when exchanging pleasantries before my daughter could say, “I think my mum’s kidney went to your husband. What do you think?”
Since Shirl had the same desire to know, it wasn’t long before the four of us were sitting down in a corner of the waiting room talking about. … well, what do four people talk about when all they have in common is a pair of kidneys? To be honest, I can’t even remember – I was still in a bit of a postsurgery fuzz – but I do remember really liking them both, and feeling very happy that such a lovely guy was wearing my kidney.
Kasari was also pretty sure she knew whose kidney she was now living with, but a tentative approach to the family in the waiting room brought a definite sense of dismissal. So that was the end of that.
So why am I telling you all this? Aside from it being just a really good story?
Well, for one, because two people who continue to live fully, bring joy to others and do good in the world, may well have been dead or, at the very least, fighting for their lives if it weren’t for those two kidneys.
It is unthinkable for me to consider the alternative for Kasari, now the mother of an active three year old, thriving in her career as a human-rights lawyer and engaged with the world on so many levels, if she hadn’t received the kidney of some anonymous donor in that cross-Canada chain.
And yet, casting my mind back to those roller-coaster years of endless doctor visits, tests, biopsies, hospital stays, a futile attempt to control the kidney decline with a restricted diet, where the ups and downs of our lives were measured in glomerular filtration rates and protein levels in urine, the unthinkable easily becomes real again. The dread each time Kasari came home from a doctor visit, trying to read on her face whether it was good news or bad, the occasional utter meltdown when the news was bad, and the useless, recurring question, “How could this be happening to us?”
I’m sure it is equally unthinkable for Vern and Shirl to imagine what their lives would be like if Vern had not received my kidney. He was a very sick man before the transplant, suffering from a host of kidney-related problems, fighting for his life. Four and a half years later, with “our” kidney doing its job, he and Shirl are looking out for the elders in their village who might be falling through the cracks, delivering meals to shut-ins and gardening up a storm. The photos he attaches to his e-mails, of the two of them grinning from ear to ear on their front deck or in the tangled wild of their back garden, make me grin right back.
I am walking around with my remaining kidney without any discernible impact on my health or my life. It was just that easy. Aside from the recovery, which took a bit longer and was a bit more uncomfortable than I had so smugly anticipated, I would not know that I am operating with just one kidney. Who knew that you really only needed one kidney? Or that you could save someone’s life with a piece of your liver, and that your liver would regenerate within six to eight weeks?
More people need to do this. Registering your wishes as an organ donor after you die is an easy way to do something amazing. One donor can save up to eight lives and benefit more than 75 people. Pretty fantastic considering that, at that point, it’s no skin off your nose, so to speak.
One of the biggest changes that happened in our family as a result of my daughter’s kidney disease (which appeared out of nowhere, to a physically fit, health-conscious young woman, with no known cause or genetic link) is that we no longer take our good health for granted. Things happen. And they don’t always happen to someone else. And it’s not our fault.
We’re all in this together. The more we can link arms, share kidneys or liver tissue, or leave our heart and eyes to others so that they may live and see when we die, the stronger we’ll all be.
Linda Light lives in Vancouver.