The Boy

This time of year is always a little hard for me. Last year I wrote this diary entry and it helped a lot. This year I’ll post it with hopes that every year will get easier.

He’s what happened to me on December 19, 2008.

Jeff drove me to the hospital and we waited in the lobby before they brought me into the pre-surgery room. I put on a hospital gown and crawled into bed in a room with many hospital beds, all partitioned by curtains. A nurse put an IV in me. I remember thinking, could this finally be the last time my arms are poked with needles? Just one more time I have to be brave with needles.

Soon my brother came. Jeff and Chris talked to me and talked to each other. We didn’t talk about the surgery. We talked about common, unimportant things and I felt so thankful for the distraction. That was the best thing they could have done for me at that moment - just talk about nothing.

Next the surgeon came. He was funny. He was making jokes and we were all laughing. A nurse came to wheel me away and I felt a flash of fear, but it was quickly replaced by excitement. All this work, all this time, all the anxiety and road blocks - now it was finally happening.

They wheeled me through the familiar hospital hallways that I recognized from all the visits, meetings and tests. Then I was in a round room; I had never seen this room before. There were many doors and each door had a number. They rolled me into room number five. The door started to open and the first real wave of fear came. This time it stuck with me and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. The fear traveled through me and I could feel my fingers and toes start to tingle with adrenalin.

The room was brightly lit, with white walls and machines everywhere. There were four or five people in the room, each dressed in surgery garb. Everyone looked so busy - setting things up, laying things out, and adjusting the machines. They all smiled at me when as I came in and I remember thinking that they all looked happy. A lady approached me and said they wanted to put me onto a table. They wanted to put another IV in my arm, this one for the anesthesia. I was wrong about there being no more needles. I was distracted by this happy, white room and everyone working busily around me. I felt suddenly calm and completely relaxed.

I was lying face up on the surgery table and it seemed to me the table was too narrow, like I might roll off the side. I wasn’t worried, I just noticed it. Another nurse started talking to me. I think she asked me a question. Was it about my kids? Then it went black.

The next thing I remember is hearing someone saying, “the boy, the boy, the boy.” The room was foggy. I felt lots of people around me in beds and I sensed there were nurses around us. Someone was talking to me, but I fall back asleep.

Then I am in another room. There is a closed curtain to my left and I can tell there is someone, another patient, behind the curtain. I want to be alone in my own room. I start falling back asleep. I see Jeff and I want him to help me get my own room but I can’t know if I told him that. I drift away. I think my eyes are closed but I can hear two ladies talking. One says, “When she woke up she was saying the boy, the boy, the boy.”

Later I woke again and this time I actually felt awake. I ask Jeff to help me get my own room. I prayed for it silently and desperately. I really needed to be alone with Jeff so that I could recover. After several hours we did get a private room and that is when the pain set in.

I was afraid of taking too much pain medication but Jeff kept telling me to push the button for more pain reliever. I resisted. Jeff stayed with me until late in the evening, but I insisted he go home and rest. I thought I would be afraid of being alone but I was so tired that it was easy to sleep.

Jeff was there early the next morning. The next several days in the hospital blur in my memory. I remember being very sick. My digestive system wasn’t adapting well and my body was rejecting food. The pain wasn’t subsiding and they were giving me more pain pills in addition to the pain reliever button I pushed. A young doctor came to check on me regularly and in a desperate moment I begged him to tell me when the pain would ease up. Then I immediately felt embarrassed for seeming so weak.

Jeff was there – talking to me, helping me. My mom and aunt sent flowers. They smelled like pinecones and Christmas trees. The flowers made me feel peaceful. Jeff and I talked about the kids coming but I couldn’t get the pain under control and I didn’t want to scare them.

I wanted to ask someone how the boy was doing but I knew I wasn’t supposed to, so I kept quiet. One night after Jeff left I laid in bed alone and I cried. I grieved. I grieved over my lost kidney and for the boy who I couldn’t know and wanted to hold. I grieved for myself, because I knew that I had lost him for good. It was over. I knew I had to move on but I cried out to him one last time. I knew I had to let him go and that it would be more painful than the recovery. I felt him slip away from me. We have never met but all this time I knew him. I grieved the death of the boy that I imagined for the past year – this faceless, nameless boy. He was gone, separated from me like death. He lives on somewhere that I can’t see, in a world that I’m not part of. I shook the bed with my cries and then I pushed the button three times and fell asleep.

The next evening a doctor came into my room. I had not seen him before and he was much older than the young doctor. He leaned over my bed and started to examine the incision in my stomach. He said, “I am a surgeon. I put your kidney in the boy.” I gasped and got very still. My hand was over my open mouth and I felt the tears welling up. I didn’t move. I knew I wasn’t supposed to ask questions but I wanted him to say more. He said, “Your kidney started working in him right away. His skin has turned back to a normal color, that’s a good sign. He’s hungry, eating very well. Better than you from what I hear. He wants to play down at the hospital playground but we are trying to encourage him to rest. He feels so much better.”

The tears were rolling down my face and my hand was still over my mouth. He put my robe back down and started to walk towards the door. “His parents are very thankful,” and then he walked out of the room. I looked at Jeff and he was crying too. That is the last I ever heard about the boy.

Nurses came on and off duty the four days I was there. Some I really liked and some were indifferent to me but I appreciated the care. Mostly it was Jeff’s presence that healed me. It was Jeff who put me together again. The doctors wanted me to walk and it was Jeff who got me out of bed, held me up, and dragged my IV around with me. Jeff, who is always steady, helped me heal. After four days I was able to eat again and so I was released. They sent me home with lots of pills and instructions, but very few restrictions. I went home on December 22 with one kidney and a very heavy heart. That’s when my life started over.