10 Years!

Ten years ago right about now I was in surgery and so was my kidney donor.  After months of tests, she was found to be a suitable donor.  Her offer to give me a kidney literally came out of nowhere.  Well, that’s how it seemed.  Actually, it came from God.  Only a few weeks after finding out my first transplanted kidney failed and I started hemodialysis (a date with misery three times a week), someone I’d never met was offering to give me a kidney.

First there was the jolt of losing the kidney.  Then there was the joyful jolt of a possible way out of that nightmare.  My emotions were like a pinball being bounced all over the place.

But, first we had to find out what her blood type was.

Over the next several months, one hurdle after another was cleared.  An infection in the dialysis port under my collarbone delayed the surgery for several weeks.

I’ve been under general anesthesia for more surgeries and procedures than I can (or want to) count.  Coming out of it, reality swims into focus much more gradually than when you wake up in the morning.  It seeps into your head as, one by one, your senses come back to life.  From there, it spreads lower to your arms and legs.  They can feel the blanket covering them and the temperature in the room, but they are too heavy to move.  At this point, you’re not sure you want to wake up further, because the place the surgeon cut and stitched is about to hurt, if it doesn’t already.

Then a post-op nurse says your name and asks how you feel.  All you can do is mumble or groan because your tongue feels thick from all the drugs.  Your throat is scratchy from being intubated for hours.  You want to say, “I feel like I was hit by a freight train.”  They spoon feed you ice chips, which melt on your tongue, waking it up.  The cool water soothes your throat.  

All of that happened that day ten years ago.  But this time, I woke up feeling more joy than I thought anyone could feel when they’re that groggy.  I joked with the nurses—something I’ve never done before or since at that stage of recovery.  Maybe the difference was having an organ from a living donor.  Maybe it had something to do with the lively, spirited nature of my donor.  It’s a question I’ll never be able to answer with any certainty.

In almost every living donor transplant, the kidney starts working immediately.  Somehow, I knew it had this time, even before the doctor confirmed it.

Over the past ten years, I’ve had cancer, gall bladder surgery, a major hernia surgery where they put a big sheet of mesh under all my abdominal muscles, and last year the Type 1 diabetes made an unwelcome return.  

The kidney held up through all of it.  It still works as well as it did in 2003.  At ten years, it has lasted twice as long as the first one from a deceased donor did.  

Just after the transplant, the additional vision loss put a damper on the post-transplant euphoria I normally would have had.  It has made my life much more of a challenge than it’s ever been.  Only recently have I realized that without her stepping forward so quickly to give me a kidney, I would have waited much longer. That means I would have been on dialysis much longer and my eyesight would have kept getting worse.  I might have ended up losing all of it.

I admit that too often, with all the hassles of being a middle-aged, legally blind guy adjusting to diabetes again, I forget that I’ve been given a miracle.

My resolution at this major milestone is to remind myself of that fact more often—especially when life is stressful and scary.  The kidney, in addition to keeping me alive and off a dialysis machine, is living proof that God loves me and wants me to be happy.

Read Jim's other blog ConfessionsOfABornAgainDiabetic.Wordpress.comhttp://confessionsofabornagaindiabetic.wordpress.com/

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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.

Visit my web page JimFairbanks.net

A Year Since I Met Cancer

Last night, a friend of mine said, “It’s almost winter again.  Seem like it was just last week.”

Most years I agree with that sentiment.  This one has been much different.  This time last year, I found out I had cancer.  At various times, time has slowed to a crawl and (most recently) sped to a dizzying pace.

It had stalked me for seven months.  But, like most stalkers, it wouldn’t be able to keep its identity a secret.  I never associated the on again off again pain in my back with the anything serious, let alone cancer

The chemotherapy loomed in front of me for nearly four weeks.  There were the combined emotions of dread and anxiety to get it over with.

Then I was in the thick of it, having to be hospitalized when my body had a worse than typical reaction to the toxic drugs that fought the grapefruit-sized tumor near my lower spine.  A few days later, my beard and most of the hair on my head fell out—just in time for one of the coldest winters on record.  The cancer provided the perfect excuse to stay inside.

The last chemo treatment was in late January.  February was a blur of mouth sores that kept me from eating or speaking and fatigue that kept me from walking more than a few feet.  I dropped 25 pounds and looked like a stick figure, but was reacquainted with my abs.

In March, I was able to be on my own again, after several weeks of being cared for by my parents at their home over an hour away.  After being frailer than at any other time in my life, being on my own again scared the hell out of me, but I knew it was the only way I would fully regain my strength.

Appetite, weight, strength—they all came back gradually, in lock step with each other.  This was unlike an organ transplant, when the medications caused my appetite and weight to increase faster than any other time in my life.  Maybe that’s why this time all the weight came back lean.  By mid-July, I had regained all that I lost, but my pants have been loose since then.

I don’t recommend the cancer diet plan, so don’t envy me.  But it’s ironic that I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in.  After a couple or organ transplants and cancer.  At 47.  I have to laugh every time I think about it.

This was more brief but more intense than anything else I’ve had to face.  All that other stuff helped prepare me for this.  Just before I got out on my own again, my dad told me, “As determined as you are, I know it won’t be long before you get your strength back.  You’ll do what you have to do to make sure of that.”

It meant going to the gym again, something I’ve liked to do for 25 years.  It meant not being self-conscious about how thin and weak I was when I first went back.  It meant getting to watch the man in the mirror become less pitiful and more familiar.

This summer, I got to meet the latest version of myself.  He’s much more confident than the previous one.  The chemo left the hair thinner over his ears (of all the weird places for that to happen) so he wears a slightly shorter haircut to keep it from standing out.  He has to wear a belt more often.  He has a more intense side that he allows to come out and play (and write) once in a while.  Most things just seem easier for him now.  He’s much more driven to succeed.  And he looks older, too.  But, he’s quite comfortable in his skin, even if it has a few more wrinkles. 

Most important, he has a better sense of what he’s capable of.

In many ways, the cancer was a gift.  Even though I lost valuable time moving the writing career ball down the field, I just wouldn’t be the same man today without the experience.

This is my latest dance with “What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.”  I know it by heart, but I wish the band would learn a new song.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m flying to Philadelphia this weekend to visit my friend, Alan, a fellow cancer survivor.  It’s the first time I’ve flown alone in almost ten years—since before my vision worsened.  I remember an old Elton John song from the 70s, Philadelphia Freedom.  The lab numbers from a few weeks confirmed that I am free of cancer.  Flying doesn’t make me nervous.  Once I’m past airport security and high above the clouds, I might feel even freer than I do on the ground these days.

Hard to imagine, but possible.  After the past year, I don’t put limits on my imagination or the possibilities.

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.