By Lawrence Henry on 2.15.08 @ 12:08AM
Three years is a long time to go without a kidney.
On my favorite Rolling Stones album, Aftermath, the LP,
the song that comes just before the well-known "Under My Thumb" is
"I Am Waiting."
I am waiting
I am waiting
Oh yeah, oh yeah
I am waiting
I am waiting
Oh, yeah, oh yeah
Waiting for someone to come out from somewhere
The song bears the unmistakable Elizabethan cast of the late
Brian Jones, the Stones' rhythm guitarist and multi-instrumentalist
of the sixties. Like many another song of the era, it doesn't seem
to be about much of anything, while, at the same time, it evokes a
great deal.
"Escalation fears," the lyric says at one point, employing a
word freighted with meaning at the time -- of an increased military
commitment in Vietnam. "Oh, yes, we will find out."
I GOT MY FIRST kidney transplant in 1981. I had been on dialysis by
that time for six years. Thank heavens I was young and strong when
I started that ordeal. I saw people wither and die under the slow
torture of the kidney machine.
Every group of doctors has a culture. How those doctors behave,
what treatments they pursue, all grow out of their culture, their
belief system. The doctors I had fallen in with believed in
dialysis, and did not push transplants.
Doctors' cultural leanings dominate their practice to this very
day. I have recently left the nephrology and transplant practice of
one of Boston's large teaching hospitals. I came to see this large
teaching institution as hidebound by process, unfocused on
results.
With my wife's help, I found another transplant center in New
England where I have now enrolled and transferred my waiting time.
I'm back on dialysis again. That first kidney failed after 21
years. Another transplant, from my sister, never really kicked in,
and failed after two years. That was three years ago.
I AM WAITING. I have signed all the papers, gone through all the
tests, and I am waiting. I probably won't wait too long. At my new
transplant center, my blood type typically gets a transplant in
about three years. I have been on dialysis three years now.
As part of the intake process, a transplant candidate gets
interviewed by a social worker. The social worker asks you about
your "support systems" (sounds like an Erector set) and such, and
always inquires if you are suffering from depression or
anxiety.
What I said this last time, having been through this before, was
that I was in tough physical shape, and that I sometimes felt down
about it, but that I regarded that feeling as a rational response
to circumstances, not as depression.
The days go by, all very much the same. Five times a day, I hang
a two-liter bag of dialysis fluid (sugar water, basically) on an IV
pole, attach it to my belly via a catheter, and let the fluid pour
into my peritoneal cavity. About three hours later, I drain the two
liters out, finding it has been augmented by 500-800 ccs of body
waste (it's pale yellow), and add a fresh bag.
THAT IS WHAT is called continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis
(CAPD), a far more merciful procedure than hemodialysis, the old
kidney machine, which pulls your blood out and squeezes it through
a filter and then gives it back to you, round and round, for three
hours every two days.
CAPD imposes some limits on what I can do, but it lets me read,
watch TV, work at the computer, or even, if pressed, get my boy fed
and dressed in the morning and off to school, feed the dog, eat a
bowl of cereal, have a cup of coffee.
But today is one of those days when the hard physical
circumstances have gotten to me. Yes, it is a rational response to
circumstance. But there it is. I am waiting.
Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
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