Happy Birthday to My Failed Pancreas

You’ve been in there 15 years today.  What an amazing time it has been.  You worked hard, keeping my glucose normal until a year ago.  That’s longer than the average transplanted pancreas lasts.  During that time I never had a single problem with you.  You went to work as soon as you were stitched in place.  By the end of the day, a nurse in ICU would tell me those four words I never thought I’d hear, “You’re not diabetic anymore.”  I drifted off to sleep feeling more free than I’d felt in 21 years, in spite of all the tubes and wires that tethered me to all sorts of medical equipment. 

You worked beautifully every day, right up until you stopped making insulin altogether.  I gave you quite a workout in those first few months, eating sweets to my heart’s content, just because I could.

You held up in spite of all the harsh chemicals in my bloodstream keeping my immune system from attacking you.  You held up after the kidney failed and I had to get another.  You held up when I had cancer and my body was flooded with toxic chemotherapy. 

You gave me 14 years of a life I bid farewell to when I was only twelve.  At that ender age I had to accept that I would be diabetic for the rest of my life along with the insulin shots, a strict diet, and a long list of possible (and scary) health problems that went with it.  After several years with the disease, some of those scary health issues began.  It looked like my life was on a long downhill slide.  After doing peritoneal dialysis for 9 months and waiting for a kidney, I discovered a pancreas could be transplanted.

Just like that, I had to rewrite reality.  The impossible was possible after all.

I wasn’t the only one praying for your arrival.  Hundreds of people held fund-raising events to raise the $50,000 I needed to pay for you.  Insurance paid for the kidney, but not you.  I’m not exaggerating when I say you were much-anticipated by many.

You reminded me and so many others miracles do happen.  Some of them have never met me in person.  Who knew one small organ no larger than a deck of cards could impact so many? 

Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without the surgeons, the young man whose life ended the day before, and his family who allowed you to be donated to me.  Because of that, my relationship with you was bittersweet right from the beginning.  This is the first “re-birthday” I’ve celebrated since your retirement last year.  Now it’s more bittersweet than ever.  Yesterday, the anniversary of my donor’s death, I lit a white candle in his honor just as I’ve always done.

The kidney I received the same day I welcomed you to my body has been replaced and one day you will be as well.  Then there won’t be any part of that young man who saved my life in there anymore.

But the impact of that day—the most life-altering event of my life—will live on for the rest of my life.

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My L.A. Odyssey Part 4: Life Lessons of the LaBrea Tar Pits

When I am discharged Monday evening Karry picks me up at the hospital and we take my prescription to a CVS Pharmacy.  While it’s being filled we kill time by driving around L.A. and I get to see the downtown skyline lit up at night.  It’s easier for me to see the builidngs that way, without the glare of the sun.

I’m feeling pretty drained and disconnected to reality.  Here I am, just out of the hospital over a thousand miles from home, in a big city where I’ve never been before.  I’ve lost weight from the nausea and little to eat after that.  I feel like a refugee.

Karry, who started out as a friend of a friend, turns out to be one in a million.  His dry sense of humor and Texas accent put me at ease.

My arms have four or five pieces of gauze taped to them where IVs were removed and blood draws (or failed attempts) took place.  After chemo last year, my veins are shriveled.  It often takes several tries to start an IV or draw blood.  There are a few purple spots not covered by bandages. 

“I must have scared some of those people in CVS,” I say.

Without missing a beat, Karry says, “I just mouthed the word ‘cutter’ when anyone stared at you.”  It’s the first good laugh I have in days.

“This is the Museum District,” he tells me.  “Over there are the LaBrea Tar Pits.”

“What exactly is that?” I ask.  I first heard of the tar pits when I was a little kid and pictured a big hole full of tar.  I always wondered why people would want to look at that.

He explains the tar pits have been there a very long time.  It's loaded with fossils and people still dig dinosaur bones out of the ground.  “They got mired in the tar and died.”

That must have been a horrible way to die, getting stuck in tar and not being able to move, gradually starving to death.

When we pick up the insulin at CVS they’ve given me vials and syringes.  “It’s supposed to be in the pen,” I tell the pharmacist.  It doesn’t take him long to correct the error.  If I’m going to be diabetic again, I’m going to do it the modern way.  This time it will be different—as different as I can possibly make it be.

That night, on a folded-out day bed in the spare bedroom/office, I don’t sleep well.  It’s a residential area, but definitely more urban than the funky maze of narrow one-way streets of my secluded little oasis in Fayetteville.  There’s more traffic and I hear people talking on the sidewalk until very late.  My mind is too cluttered for sleep, anyway.

“They got mired down in it and died.”

I realize that’s the lesson I needed at that moment.  Maybe it was worth missing my flight home the day before so I could hear that phrase and take something from it.  If I let myself get mired down by this latest development, I won’t survive.  That’s true of anything.  To survive, we have to be able to keep going, to move beyond the things in life that would mire us down.

My L.A. Odyssey Part 3: Seismic Jolt in California

Make sure your hands and feet are secure as well as any personal items.  This rollercoaster ride is intense.  After being inspired by Steadman Graham to play up my own quirky individuality in one of the most powerful speeches I’ve ever heard, I can no longer contain the bubbling, straining sickness in my gut.  Something I ate for lunch is unhappy being cooped up in there.

While everyone else stands to clap, I hurry for the door, but James says they will interview Mr. Graham.  Damn! I hate to miss that.

I only make it as far as a trash can where I throw up.  Classy.  At least almost everyone else is still inside.  Back at my room, I get sick a few more times.  Knowing how fast and serious it is for a kidney transplant recipient to become dehydrated in this situation, I have the hotel call paramedics.  This will take IVs to fix, no matter what it is.

Minutes later, I’m seeing the bright lights of L.A. on a Friday night from the back of an ambulance on my way to Marina Del Rey Hospital, the nearest one.  The next few hours are a blur of throwing up, listening to other patients on the other side of the curtains, pricked fingers, high blood sugar(!) and insulin injections.  It doesn’t take me long to realize something’s wrong with my pancreas.

They admit me to the hospital, perform several tests: CAT can, X-rays, an untrasound on the pancreas.  Between all that are more finger sticks followed by insulin shots.  I’m told I have several gall stones.  There’s a slim chance this is causing the elevated blood sugar.

I’m missing the last half of the conference.  That feeling of being on top of my game, of it all coming together like magic has been replaced by dread.  I’m in a daze at how fast it happened.  To go from such a pinnacle to a failed transplanted organ is a huge drop even by my standards.  Mostly I just sit in the hospital bed without the TV on.  I’m trying to listen to my body.  I’m trying to listen to God.  All I can ask is, “Why now?”  Not even “Why?” but “Why NOW?  When I’m on the verge of telling my story to millions of people and helping millions of people.  If it’s what God wants me to do, then wny one more obstacle?  Why one more delay?”

My consolation in all this is the excellent care I get at the hospital.  The absolute nicest doctor to ever treat me is there.  They call him Dr. H because his name is hard to pronounce.  The caring attitude of the nurses and everyone I encounter puts me at ease.  Yes, it sucks being in a hospital a thousand miles from home, but they are making it much easier.

On Sunday, I miss my scheduled fight home.  I was looking forward to sitting with my friend, Kim, on the plane and talking about the conference.  All those ideas I had, knocking down the door, will have to wait until my latest health crisis is behind me.  It’s frustrating.

On Monday, a woman with a thick “Fargo” accent tries to explain the talking glucometer.  I can understand her accent, but she has a strange way of phrasing her words and it sounds like gibberish.  Finally, I think I get it. 

I’m back in the world of the diabetic.  For fourteen years I was a fugitive, though I thought I was a legal parolee.  This time, I’ll be a diabetic with worse vision than before and with a transplanted kidney to take care of as well.  This realization weighs on me.  It starts to draw me under.

I came to L.A. thinking I would be different when I returned home.  I was right, but this part was totally unexpected.

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