Thirty-six hours after my first kidney transplant, I woke up in
the middle of the night in an ICU, all alone except for a friendly
nurse.
“How do you feel?” she asked me.
“Pretty good, actually,” I said, “but I’m dying for a
cigarette.”
“Come on,” said the nurse. “We can smoke down the hall.”
She led me out of the unit, down the corridor toward a smoking
lounge — it was 1981, a more merciful time; hospitals still had
such things. On the way, wheeling my IV pole, I passed a mirror —
and wondered how in the world I had managed to get a ruddy suntan
in a day and a half inside a hospital.
It wasn’t a suntan, of course, it was the contrast. A day and
half earlier, I had looked as sere and yellow as a withered
parchment. Another year on dialysis, and I would have been dead.
Now, 36 hours on, a new, vital engine of health pumped away in my
body, donated by my mother, restoring me to health. It was that
fast.
Yesterday, I had the same kind of experience in reverse. I
looked up one of my back columns, written in October of 2001, and
read it in shock. I recognized the vivacious prose as my own, but
at the same knew I didn’t write like that anymore, with energy to
spare, power to burn. I am fading once again like an old parchment
as that 1981 kidney transplant gradually fails. Little things pile
on little things, a little at a time. Purple patches of bruise
appear under my skin, who knows from what; it gets harder to walk;
my concentration flags; fun is sleep.
I work most at not disappearing from my loved ones, from my wife
and my two little boys.
Sally, especially, must stand by unable to do anything — and
for a women so energetic, not being able to do anything is torment
— while I visit doctors, plan the new transplant, take treatments,
eat and drink with some care, and handle what I can. It’s like
being the wife of a soldier, I suppose, knowing your man is out
there somewhere, vulnerable to hidden enemies.
So I do what I can to let her know I’m still here, and that I
love her. I can still slog, even if I’m not inspired. I can shop,
do housework, take care of the kids, cook, clean up, run
errands.
The ghostly world of the Internet suits me very well.
All the physical issues will work out. Odds on transplant are
very good these days, far better than when I did it the first time.
Doctors nowadays express astonishment that so crude a procedure,
handled with such rudimentary immunosuppressant drugs, worked so
well. My sister will donate a kidney to me this time. My regular
readers will remember “The
Transplant That Wasn’t,” about how our first attempt to arrange
the operation fell through. The doctors in Boston have consulted
with a specialist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, who
pioneered a technique for performing successful transplants from
donors with the same kind of antibody profile my sister has. We
figure that, by taking these extra measures, this one will work.
The odds I get are something like nine out of ten. Back in 1984, it
was just a little above 50-50.
But the physical part isn’t so important. Instead, I pay
attention to staying as real for my family as I can, especially for
my wife. It’s kind of like raising children. You can concentrate so
much on your children’s needs that, when the kids fly the nest, you
turn to your spouse in consternation and wonder, “Who are you?”
In five days or so, I’ll come home from the hospital with a
ruddy tan, parchment no more, restored. It is as near a miracle as
medicine provides today, virtually identical with full health, as
long as you remember your pills.
Right now, I simply do my best to make sure that the man who
comes home won’t surprise his wife too much. I want to make sure,
even in weakness, that Sally always knows who I am.
