“She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad and that is important.” ~ Marilyn Monroe
From the age of eight, I have known that I will have to work hard to get a good education and a good job in order to afford my expensive lifestyle — a lifestyle of costly doctor visits, medications, and treatments that will keep me alive with one transplanted kidney.
To this day the doctors don’t know why my kidneys failed at such a young age. I was adopted from Guatemala, a third world country, so my medical records and biological background have not been accessible. It is likely, though, that I inherited kidney disease from one of my biological parents. The doctors said that I needed dialysis, a process by which a machine does the job of the kidneys. In order for the machine to work properly, it had to go through a twelve-hour cycle, so we decided to do it at night. I would be hooked to the machine at around seven o’clock at night and be disconnected at seven o’clock in the morning, just in time for school.
Going to school was different once I started dialysis: I wasn’t allowed to play gym or go outside for recess, and I received a lot of attention from my classmates and teachers, as well as other students in my school. Everywhere I went, people came up to ask me how I was feeling, and to tell me that they were praying for me and my family.
As I tried to go to school and do nightly dialysis, I also went to a new hospital, Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, which specializes in organ donation. The goal was to find me a new kidney so I could get off dialysis and live a more normal life.
January 1, 2007, was more than just New Year’s Day for me. It was New LIFE Day. My family received a call from Mount Sinai informing us that a match had been found and that I needed to come to the hospital as soon as possible for my kidney transplant. We rushed to Manhattan to prep for surgery. When I woke up, my parents were standing on the bedsides, smiling, eyes full of tears, and they said to me “You’re all better now.” I smiled in relief as the long and dark road was finally at an end. I made it. The doctors said that everything was going well and within a week I was back home resting in my bed with no dialysis.
I am thankful for this life changing event since it opened my eyes to all different forms of sickness and how quickly life can go from bad to worse and back to good again.
Since that miracle eight years ago the new kidney has taken over the job my old ones couldn’t finish. I have had no complications with the transplanted kidney which sadly may happen with some transplant patients. I was able to go back to school and play with my friends in school once more, But not in the same way. I am thankful for this life changing event since it opened my eyes to all different forms of sickness and how quickly life can go from bad to worse and back to good again. For the past eight years I’ve had to be very cautious about what activities I participate as well as watch what I put into my body as well. Which is nothing compared to what could of happened if I didn’t receive a transplant at all. Without the transplant I would have died as a child and not be able to live as a health adult living life to the fullest.