Kicking the Kidney – Part 1

The first steps have been taken. We’re hoping to kick one of my kidneys out … and Satirical Stutter will tell the story – test by test, drop by drop and stitch by stitch.

For those of you regularly reading here, this is a long and cumbersome process. A number of people, including I, are really hoping that this donation will become a reality, but there are no guarantees. Please hope/pray with us.

Where it started

This is debatable, of course. Let me try to resist the temptation of telling entire life stories.

This is Jan.

He looks nervous here. It is because November 12 was the day he boarded a plane from Pretoria to Port Elizabeth with the main purpose of meeting me. (I still feel weird even saying that.)

Before this Jan and I exchanged our stories via email, we became Facebook friends and there is that wonderful thing called WhatsApp.

Jan is an intelligent, tall, brave man with a wife and two adult daughters.

Unfortunately, he has a genetic illness called polycystic kidney disease. The name is fairly self-explanatory, the kidneys basically self-destruct.

Jan has been on the kidney transplant list in South Africa since 2008 and since 2010 he has had zero kidney function and has had to undergo dialysis every second day. It means final stage renal failure.

Jan really needs a kidney.

Before I met Jan, I thought the main pain about dialysis was the fact that it is a time-consuming process during which you are strapped to a machine in a hospital.

That makes dialysis sounds like a small bother, but it really isn’t.

Dialysis is only around 21% effective. Jan’s blood never gets cleaned as well as a healthy, functioning kidney would do it. In practice, it means Jan is tired, weak, has difficulty with concentration and moods, and is vulnerable to disease … to mention a few aspects of what is a really bad situation.

This is Jan shortly after we met for the first time.

 

 

It’s easy to see Jan looks much more relaxed here. We instantly got along famously. We met for breakfast, had omelettes and by the time I got home it was a bit late for lunch.

So, this is, in short, Jan’s part in how it started. There is a lot more to tell about Jan and he is the main character in this story, but for now, let’s move on to another character. Stephanie. She really is a character.

She is the brunette barbie on the right. (I’m in the middle.)

 

In the interest of the presenting the story in scrollable and easily digestible parts, Stephanie’s substantial role in how it began will be featured in Part 2 (also I want to go watch TV now).

Feel free to comment/ask questions.

To be continued …