“He instilled in my mind there was better out there. Someone who he didn’t have to help when I wasn’t feeling well, someone who he didn’t have to go to the ER with, someone who was ‘normal,’ who’s body was not scarred up. I said to my dad, ‘I can’t do it anymore. I can’t take this anymore.'”
‘What now?,’ is all that ran through my mind. ‘How did this happen to me?’ All the voices in the room disappeared. I was washed on a metal table with hoses that hung from the ceiling.’
‘I blurt out, ‘I want the surgery.’ I’ll never forget the look on his face. What kind of patient asks for a major life changing surgery? I kept replaying the conversation my mother and I had.’
“My mother was my best friend and I couldn’t accept she would be gone soon. I refused to discuss it with her until one day she said to me ‘You can ask me anything you want.’ That was all it took.”
‘Before I knew it, he lowered the mask onto my face. I remember thinking ‘please’ over and over. I sensed the desperation in their voices, and closed my eyes.’
“A man in dark blue scrubs followed me in. My heart stopped, my breathing hitched and suddenly I knew what was coming. I was only 16, how could I possibly be okay after this?”
‘Our daddy needs a kidney’: Father’s desperate need for a transplant ‘to watch the boys grow up’
“Our 4-year-old worries if Daddy will be home in the morning to take him to school. Our little guy knows that Daddy’s kidneys are broken.”