Bad News

Well, friends, I have bad news. My final cross-match with Jackie was positive, apparently way positive, which is way bad. Positive means non-compatible. My immunity apparently changed since the first cross match and I have developed a specific immunity against Jackie’s kidney, so the surgery is canceled. Oof.

Jackie and I had done our final set of tests yesterday, including the blood draw, to get everything finalized, so I was waiting to hear about the cross match. I knew that it could come back positive, and I worked to be cautiously optimistic, moving slowly, but honestly I was not at all expecting to hear that news, When Julie, my transplant coordinator, who had the unenviable job of breaking this to me, told me that she had bad news, I was stunned, I felt it in my teeth. It was during a break in my Critical Pedagogy class so I was able to answer her phone call. She said a few things I don’t remember and that was it. I sat in a stairwell and breathed for a while. Processing. I thought about spaces on my calendar. I thought about how I would tell people. I thought about going back to class as if nothing had happened. I thought about how disappointed Jackie would be. I wondered what I was feeling in my teeth, like I had chewed on aluminum foil. I thought about how, earlier in the day, I had realized that if the cross match was positive and the surgery was canceled, how I would feel devastated. That’s the word I used, devastated. I wondered if what I was feeling was devastated.

I had shared with the class that I was planning to be gone the next two weeks, that I was having a transplant. When Tim, our professor, came back into the room at the end of our break, I did my best to explain what had happened, and said I was leaving. They shared their condolences and I zipped out of there.

I had biked to class for the first time since winter, and biking home I managed to cry while biking, which was a first for me. And despite how floored I was the day was beautiful, it was a beautiful day to bike.

It’s been about two hours since I heard. I put away my pre-surgery drugs, and my pre-surgery instructions. I put dialysis back on the calendar through July. I cried, and cried some more. I’m not sure what happens next. Well, I know that tomorrow I go back to dialysis, and instead of having one more session, they are again laid out before me for weeks to come.

This is rough. I’m still working out how to think about it. This renews a fear I’ve had for a while that my health declined in 2013 with the pneumonia and that’s it; I will never be healthy like that again. At the same time I believe that something will work itself out, somehow; that in four months or five months, or a year I will have another transplant and remember these days as part of my story. My reality is both of these. I am not promised anything. And I have the same supportive people around me now as I did this morning. Given the choice, I’d rather be nervous and excited about my impending surgery, but that’s not what’s next. Thanks for reading.