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the Captain placed me in the ambulance, I wondered what on earth was happening to me! Long story short, I was uncomfortable at hospital where the ambulance brought me. My daughter was able to get me back to Georgia, where I was diagnosed with End-Stage Renal Failure (ESRD). My nephrologist looked at me and said, “You must be tough because you should have died!” Kidney failure, I thought, how had this happened? In retrospect, my doctors and I had missed all of the warning signs, but they were all there. Dialysis had never even been a thought for me prior to this. I was unfamiliar with the process and felt extremely overwhelmed. I had a catheter in my neck and watched as my blood cycled through the machine; it was humbling. I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I was a teacher, coached a step team and active. What would my life be like now? After leaving the hospital, I went to the dialysis clinic where my nephrologist stayed past his shift to hold my hand through that first visit. He was one of the many angels sent to me along this journey. I was shaking barely holding back tears, I looked into his eyes and said "I don’t want to be here." He matched me with a special nurse named Glenda whose accent felt familiar right away. I said, “Are you Jamaican?” She replied 'yes' and at that moment I felt a sense of ease come over me, as though my mother had sent her to comfort me. Glenda sat me in the “Lucky Chair” (as those who received successful transplants referred to it) and gave me a magazine that had several testimonies from transplant patients, which encourage me to have hope to return to a more normal life. In the following months, I switched to peritoneal dialysis and went through the transplant evaluation process. I had to have mammograms, cardiovascular tests, gynecological ultrasounds, endless blood work, endocrinology, and
urology exams, before eventually being placed on UNOS transplant waiting list. My husband volunteered to be tested as a living donor and much to our joy was a match; however, the committee initially rejected him because he was ten pounds overweight (which he lost in two weeks!). In the midst of everything going on, I also faced loosing my job after taking FMLA under a less than sympathetic administration, which would mean loosing my health insurance. I cried out to God, “We have been through so much, now with everything in place, I would not be insured for the procedure?” My husband and I agreed in prayer and decided to take a stand together against my employer. After a long and tiring meeting with our attorneys, we were left feeling hopeless and discouraged. As we sat in traffic on Peachtree St, I played a song by Tye Tribbett called “He Turned It,” and we praised God for the provision at our lowest point. At that moment, the phone rang and it was my transplant team letting us know that a surgery date had opened up for the following week if we wanted it. We both yelled, “Yes, we’ll take it!” On February 16, 2018, I received a kidney transplant from my husband - it was exactly 15 years to the day of our first date. Indeed, my husband was true to his word; he is my “Mexican Superman!” Biblical scholars say that there is no word for 'coincidence' in Hebrew and I recognize that to be true. Our prayer is that you be encouraged and know that you are not alone on your transplant journey! GA TRANSPLANT
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