I Kidney Valentine’s Day

You knew I couldn't let Kate have the whole day to herself, plus I only have 3 weeks to get this story up to date before the donation, so quick read today and Update on the status and Dates.

Today is Kate’s and my 3^rd wedding anniversary, so I have to start with a happy anniversary to my beautiful wife.  It is hard to believe the time has flown by so quickly, seems like only yesterday we started dating, I am really excited to see where the next 3 years bring us not to mention the many more years after that.

So we got pretty big news yesterday, everything seems to be signed off on, and all the I’s are crossed and the t’s are dotted and I am scheduled for preop on Feb 9^th, with the surgery to be scheduled on Feb 14^th.  That is right Valentine’s day, so I hope Kate isn’t jealous but I guess I am giving Ashley a (insert whatever word fits here in your mind, cause they all seemed a little weird to me) better valentine's gift than I will be giving to Kate. 

My emotions are fluctuating from excitement, to apprehension, to being a little overwhelmed with the thoughts of all the things that still have to happen.  Of course these dates aren’t 100% finalized, the board will meet on Monday the 30^th on our case and finalize the dates, but the coordinator said he didn’t see why it wouldn’t move forward.  I’m not sure how I expected to feel right now, but I still am waiting for another shoe to drop as they say, and still have one more delay, but I will stay positive and go back to the story.

How do you make a decision like this?

This is a decision that not only affects you but your wife, both of your families, your work, your friends at work, your friends, your mailman, the neighbors, 490 friends on facebook and well I guess it took it too far but at some level this decision has a lot of impact.  I don’t want to minimize the thoughts both Kate and I put into this decision individually, but there was never any doubt for either of us, that one of us was going to donate.

How do you decide who?

When both of us are saying that we aren’t going to let the other one do it.  Well as a man I try to use logic and as a woman Kate wants to use emotion.  It was a long conversation that took most of our drive back to Florida, and still continued weeks after that.  When we first talked to UNC we asked if we both could be tested to see if we were a match before deciding which one would go through with the procedure, however this wasn’t an option.  They will only test one possible donor at a time.

This accelerated the decision process, in Kate’s mind it was her friend and she wanted to do it, she didn’t want to put this off on me. In my mind I have a job with benefits such as sick time, a sick leave pool, and would be covered by FMLA (family medical leave act), Kate works for herself and if she can’t work there is no one to do the work for her, and she doesn’t get paid. 

In Kate’s mind it is her best friend and she should be the one to do it, wait I already said that, but this is sometimes how these things go.  In my mind, Kate works out of the house, so she could help me during recovery much better than I could help her from the office. 

In Kate’s mind she doesn’t want to worry about the health of her husband and she thinks she is tougher than me (I don’t agree with that last part). The last point we came too that was in favor of me donating was that we wanted to have children, and even though you can have children after a kidney donation, did we want to have to wait till after the recovery and put Kate’s body through that much more strain.  So Logic prevailed in our case and we chose me to be the donor.

It wasn’t an easy decision; it didn’t come without a lot of prayer, thought, and consideration.  Now that we are within a month of the surgery and with all the hoops we have had to jump through there is no doubt in my mind that it was the correct decision.