Sally and I played golf for the first time this season as a
Mother’s Day treat for her. I could manage only 7 of 9 holes. I was
shocked at how weak I had gotten. As it happened, that weekend
marked the anniversary of the start of my most serious decline. On
the Tuesday of Players’ Championship week last year, I woke up at
four in the morning with my legs paralyzed.
I crawled into the kitchen — no hope trying to waken either of
my two hard-sleeping sons upstairs; Sally was in Montenegro — and
called our ever-faithful housekeeper on my cell phone.
“I’m having a low blood pressure episode,” I told Jennifer.
“Bring some crackers.”
Jennifer showed up with the crackers, but the salt did no good,
and she sensibly told me we needed to call an ambulance. Off I went
with the EMTs for the first, and the worst, of that year’s trips to
the hospital.
They kept me for a week. My initial problem was an ulcerated
esophagus, from taking over-the-counter pain relievers. I remember
the docs trying to place a nasogastric tube and the blood burbling
out of my mouth. I was garbling, “Take it out! Take it out!” And
that’s the last image I knew for many days.
They tell me I had a heart attack. I didn’t know. The first
thing I saw when I came out of a kind of coma was our minister’s
smiling face as he sat in a chair waiting for me to wake up. I will
never forget that kindness.
LONG TERM DIALYSIS takes the strength right out of you. I had been
on dialysis for two years at that point. When a disaster like that
hospitalization happens, you go straight downhill. The hospital
stay put on 30 pounds of fluid and gave me peritonitis. I lost the
weight. I cured the peritonitis. But the trials had only just
begun.
I will not go into those trials in any detail. I had to go to
the hospital five or six times for gastrointestinal bleeds
throughout last fall and winter. At times now I am so weak I can
scarcely walk.
What sustained me was the hope of an imminent kidney transplant.
Now, I find that my “recalculated PRA” — or protein reactive
antibody rating — is 90 percent. Nine out of ten people carry
antigens — proteins — to which I have developed antibodies.
The transplant could happen tomorrow. I am, at least, being
tested against every available O positive kidney, because I’m now
at the top of the list. But I could be in for a wait. A long
wait.
SO HERE’S MY RESOLUTION for the summer, and for the foreseeable
time beyond. I must fight back and try to get stronger. I have made
a list of a dozen exercise routines. Most take ten minutes or so.
I’m aiming to do between four and eight of those routines a
day.
I’ve got to dig in and work out against the awful lassitude and
the pain in which I find myself. I have to engage in the battle. I
have to fight. I know what will happen if I don’t, because it has
already started to happen in the last year. My muscles will shrink.
I can no longer touch my toes. It is a struggle to climb stairs. A
long walk around a supermarket exhausts me.
Can I get stronger? I don’t know. Without kidneys, the body
weakens, and weakens horribly. I’ve been through this before,
before my first transplant. Then, with my mother as a donor, I knew
the transplant would happen,
This time, I’ve just got to build up strength on guts, and
prayer, and with no finishing line in sight. And, most important,
not even knowing if it’s possible.
O LORD, how long will this go on? Will you hide
yourself forever?
How long will your anger burn like fire? Remember how short my
life
is, how empty and futile this human existence! No one can live
forever; all will die. No one can escape the power of the
grave.
Lord, where is your unfailing love? You promised it to
David with a faithful pledge. (Psalm 89:46-49)
Lawrence Henry writes every week from North Andover,
Massachusetts.
