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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Happy Birthday to Me--And All the Other Survivors

I rarely call much attention to my own birthday, especially since I passed 40 so long ago it’s almost disappeared from my rearview mirror.  If you count the two transplant surgeries, I get to celebrate three birthdays a year.  Unlike the original one, I can remember those two. 

But, this year is different. 

Last year, my birthday landed on Memorial Day.  It’s something that happens every few years.  It’s a bit surreal having a birthday that occasionally lines up with a roaming holiday like Memorial Day, Labor Day, or Thanksgiving.  At the end of May, cold and flu season is long over.  You don’t have to worry about being sick on your special day.  But, last year, there was some kind of bug going around and I coughed and sneezed all weekend.  I wondered if it was some kind of omen about the year to come.

It turns out that it was.

In the late fall, I was diagnosed with cancer.  It was a highly curable form of it, but it was cancer just the same.  That meant chemotherapy and all the nasty side effects that go with it.  By the time I had been at it for nine weeks, I was cured.  The word that keeps coming to my mind is ‘intense.’  It was a relatively brief encounter with The Big C, but it left me reeling for a few months afterward.

Last winter, I spent a lot of time watching TV.  Beside sleeping and checking e-mail once in a while, it was the only thing I felt like doing.  I saw a commercial in which a woman sang “Happy Birthday” and said it was for everyone who had survived cancer to celebrate another birthday.  First of all, it was nice to see a commercial where no one was trying to sell me anything.  It was a relief to see one that wasn’t so weird and vague that I was left wondering just what the message was.  And it was really special to be honored in such a way.

That commercial was months early for me, but I had faith that I would live to mark another year.  I’ve always loved having a birthday this time of year.  It was always during those first, sweet days of summer vacation from school.  It put the period (sometimes the exclamation mark) at the end of the school year.  Move on to the next grade, then turn a year older.

I share a birthday (May 31^st) with celebrities Clint Eastwood, Joe Namath, Brooke Shields, and writer Walt Whitman.  Now, there’s a mixed bag!

This year, I share the celebration with everyone who has beat cancer and those living with it that made it through another year.  After cancer, life just doesn’t look the same.  We’re part of the same tribe now.  We have a bond.

You know what they say about getting older—it beats the alternative.

I belong to a few other tribes who know this fact better than most people do.  There are the others who had a kidney/pancreas transplant.  There are those who had another type of transplant.  There are the diabetics—that includes the current and former ones (like me).

This birthday will be especially sweet.  The cancer was timed well in my case.  I get to look and feel like myself again on that day.  I’m a year older, but thanks to the cancer, I’m “new and improved” in many ways.  Once you’ve dealt with cancer, everything else seems pretty easy.

And so, to all of us who have survived something intense, whether it was health-related, a natural disaster, or something caused by the malice or carelessness of another—Happy Birthday.  Not matter what day it is.