Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry


powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

June 03, 2002 - 2:46 p.m.

This is not going to be one of those light-hearted what I did last weekend entries, even though my weekend has enough tales to fill at least 2 or 3 entries.  Those will have to wait for later in the week when I have time to tell all as it were.  Today's entry is all about Mom. No, don't look all confused at your calendars it isn't some holiday you have forgotten about.  You see I was on the phone with her last night and talking about the coming week and she mentioned that she is headed to MCV (Medical College of Virginia) tonight for some testing to take place tomorrow.  Tomorrow my Mom is going to deal with 6 hours of testing an type matching to get onto the kidney donor list.



Many of you have met Judy Miner.  Many of you have not, but hopefully someday you will.  She is the nice little old lady that came to my coronation, a mere 3 weeks after nearly dying.  She is the wonderful person that I went to France with earlier this year.

And Mom is a kidney dialysis patient.  That is to say three days a week, Monday Wednesday, and Friday, my mom gets up at 4:45 AM to go to the Dialysis center to have her blood cleaned - machines do for her body what it cannot.  She is there until about 11:00 and then she leaves and goes about the rest of her day as best as she can.  She drives herself to dialysis each session and more often than not she stops on the way home for a sandwich at the local deli.  Not bad for a woman on borrowed time.

You see, she was diagnosed with Diabetes in the 1960's at the age of 12.  My grandmother used to tell me that it was a miracle that she lived long enough for them to figure out what was wrong with her.  Medicine has advanced a hell of a lot since then, but one of the common side effects then and now for diabetics is a long term toll on the kidneys.   It seems that the body is not fond of having something injected every day, multiple times a day.  And the kidneys try to break all of that insulin down.  In the end, it breaks the kidney's down.

In February of 2000 my mother had 100% kidney failure.  In her typical fashion she called me at work before they took her to the hospital.  She told me that she had NOT been sick with the flu for the past three weeks, her body had finally gotten too toxic to continue.  She was going to the hospital to die now, but wanted to call ... so I wouldn't worry when I couldn't reach her at home.  That is my mom, always considerate.

She thought she was going to die, because in her mind that was preferable than facing dialysis treatments.  Fear of the unknown is one of the most powerful things there is.  And to her, the dialysis was the combination of an unknown and the shadowy remembrance of a painful death that her grandmother went through, also as a diabetic in the 1960's.  So in and amongst tons of doctors and hysterical friends and relatives.  I asked her to try.  To have dialysis just once.  If it was too painful or not for her, I promised to stand up with her and never make her do that again.  By the grace of god, I have not had to do that and have been granted a lot more time with my mother.



From time to time some person  in my life gets to know me well enough to understand what it is that I deal with as a person with Fibromyalgia.  Some of the pain and fatigue that I deal with on a daily basis.  And invariably there is the statement that I handle it well, or that I cover my symptoms gracefully.  I learned from a master.

Mom was diagnosed with kidney disease in 1985 - at that point she had no function in one kidney and less that 25% function in the other.  Many folks would have been on dialysis with in a year of that.  Hell, many would have folded up and died.  My mother, crazy woman that she is, turned her life inside out.  She cut out whole sections of foods/food groups that are hard on the kidneys and decided to live in and live with every minute.  She was there when I graduated from high school, to the shock of here doctors.  She was there when I graduated from college.  Again to their amazement. She is a fighter, the kind that just hangs in there for the long haul



Which is why one of her life decisions has bothered me.  Mom never got on the kidney donor list.  She never applied.  She told me that she didn't think she deserved to get "spare parts" and that she intends to live all of her life with the ones she has.  She has told me that she is afraid, afraid of having a life but no quality of life.  Of having to go though a long surgery and having an organ rejected.  So many of the successful donor operations are from family members.  There are so few times in my life that I have ever thought about the impact of being adopted.  I can honestly say that talking with Mom, and knowing that I can't give her one of my kidneys is the only time I have REGRETTED the fact that she is my mom, in everything but blood.

Tomorrow, she is going through the tests and getting on the donor list.

Because I asked her to.

How does a daughter ever say thanks for that?  Thanks for trying, thanks for being there.  Thanks for providing an example of a woman that is not held back by physical limitations, by social expectations, or even ... by fear. Thanks Mom.
 

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!