Meeting Rene

A disclaimer before we begin: This part of the story is always a little uncomfortable to tell. I never want to come across as sounding like I was playing the role of some Higher Power, trying to decide who was "worthy" to receive an organ from me. However, if I was gonna do this, a decision had to be made. And this is how it was made...

When I initially logged on to MatchingDonors, I didn't really have the intention of contacting someone that same night. I just wanted to get a feel for what the website was about and how it worked. I fooled around on other areas of the site before actually looking at patient profiles, but eventually got around to doing the latter. What I found was a lot of sadness, but also a lot of hope. I was strictly looking at people who needed kidneys, and it was amazing to me how hard most of them were fighting--sitting through several hours long dialysis treatments multiple times per week is just the first step in having kidney disease (dialysis a a medical treatment in which all of the blood in a person's body is run through a special filtration machine and then pumped back into the body)--and still were trying to live normal, productive lives. I skimmed through probably 30 or 40 profiles and was about to call it a night when I clicked on Rene's.

There was something different about Rene's profile that struck me almost immediately. The tone that she used to describe herself and her disease seemed so much more upbeat, positive, and hopeful than other profiles I had seen. She described her kidney disease as only one aspect of her life--focusing on her teenage son and the things she lives her life for, rather than the fight she has to undergo to live the life she wants. Something about this hopefulness struck me. I also thought it cool when I read she had promised to take her son, who loves 60's and 70's rock, to Paris after her transplant so that they could visit Jim Morrison's grave. My own teenage brother is also a rock 'n' roll connoisseur, and this was to be just one of the many coincidences Rene and I would find in our lives over the next few months.

I decided to send a message to Rene, not volunteering up any body parts right away, but just to hear more about who she was and what her needs were. We began to get to know one another over the next few weeks. I don't know at what point I offered to begin the process to see if I would be a match; honestly, I think I probably felt it "right" that first summer night I ran across her profile. While many people around me didn't quite understand why someone would choose to give a kidney to a stranger--with legitimate arguments: "What if something happens to you?, What if you need your kidney one day?, What if one of your family members needs a kidney one day?"--it felt just as much a no-brainer decision as the day I got my driver's license and listed myself as an organ donor. I have two kidneys and can live with one. Rene had kidneys that did not work. Why not give her one? I had to believe that if some of those "what if's" that my friends and family members were posing actually came true, that something in the universe would intercede for me--maybe in the same way that it did in bringing Rene and me together.

Another question I heard while deciding to do this was: "If we only need one kidney to live, then why did God give us two?" My answer? Maybe God gave us two so that we can give one away.