Picture taken from: udgtv.com
One of the most difficult moments on the life of a close family is when one of its members is given a serious or irremediable medical diagnosis. That’s devastating; a lot of questions appear: Will we make it? What should we do now? What are the options? What are the risks? What are the possibilities of success? This one that I’m going to tell you was one of the toughest and happiest experiences of my life.
My mother, brothers and I had gone through the hard trance of losing our father to cancer, when a couple years later my oldest brother was diagnosed with a terminal kidney failure. By listening to this, one’s head goes immediately to all the cases of people on dialysis protocol, all those waiting for a kidney, among an endless list of others on the same condition. That day, fear took over of us, we became paralyzed for about a week, we didn’t know what to do neither where to begin.
We all made the decision of not telling anything to our mother for the moment, so we could save her the suffering. Then we started the process. The doctors put him on a “transplant protocol”, that list where the ones waiting for organs are, and we began to see who was willing to be voluntary donor. We agreed with my siblings and sister-in-law to ask for an appointment with the treating doctor in order to know about our alternatives and what could we do, our possibilities of someone donating voluntarily or if there was a country where the proceedings of finding a donor were easier.
According to Venezuelan laws on the matter, donating in life is only permitted to direct family, parents until certain age, children of legal age and siblings, spouses cannot. The doctors informed us that the best scenario for a transplant patient was receiving an organ from a living donor because it would be on perfect condition and functioning, and it goes from one body to another basically on the same surgical act and since they needed to be related directly there was less chance for rejection.
Firstly we knew neither of my two nieces, daughters of my ill brother, were compatible with him, so it was impossible to consider them as donors, and our mother, besides having exceeded the allowed age, has only one kidney product of an operation. We kept looking for solutions then.
It remain the possibility of one of his three siblings were voluntary donors. My youngest brother was discarded immediately because he was hypertensive. So it was only my older sister and me. The two of us were ready to do whatever was necessary to help.
Thus we began to know if we were compatible and which one was to a greater extend, and to do so the compatibility exams were carried out on the Institute of Immunology of the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). The results? For our joy my brother had on each of us two possible donors with a really high percentage of genetic compatibility. He was, according to the doctors, very lucky, he had two alternatives when most have none.
From that moment, my sick brother had to perform all the test that allowed to know if he was able to be operated and also do every medical and dental procedures needed, since he should be on a optimal state for everything that would come next.
Meanwhile, they also had to do us all kind of exams to verify we were healthy and if our kidneys were suitable. Depending on the results of those, it would be determined which one of the two of us was on better shape to be the donor and which one would be discarded. It is so that when we took our respective blood pressure Holsters, my sister’s came up with a peak of hypertension and I came first on the line. I was his donor!!! I still lacked some important results but we already have passed the hardest road. We gave our mother the news a few days before the big day. We saved her a couple of weeks of suffering and we already had the solution on the way.
Now another inconvenient was placed in front of us; it turns out that my brother’s health insurance cover only his operation, the one with the illness, but my insurance didn’t cover mine, because I was healthy. That’s right, health insurance here cover the expenses of the recipient and the donor doesn’t get any support. However, after such a long ride we were not going to stop there, so we asked for a loan to pay for it.
The day came, the whole family was with us, each one of a different room. They took me first to extract the organ, while my brother was being prepared. They were very difficult hours for everyone, we were each in an different operating room.
Picture taken from: mayorclinic.org
When I regained consciousness, I was on the recovering room of the Policlínica Metropolitana, with only one kidney, an abdominal wound, very sore and expectant for the product of that crusade. I was moved to a proper room and my brother was still on surgery. Then we got the news from the surgeon, everything had gone well and he would be transferred to the Intensive Cares Unit. The second day he was translated to a room but none could visit him due to the amount of immunosuppressants they were giving him to avoid rejection. Before we could go out of the hospital, I was allowed to visit him, it was a wonderful moment. He would regain his health and I was not at any risks. The doctors told me that, if I take good care of myself, I could live perfectly with only one kidney without any bad repercussion.
His recovery was not fast, it never is on this kind of cases, the patients spend months isolated, they cannot go out their house or be visited, but we made it. That’s how, 6 years later, we are here, both really healthy.
I never wrote about this, but I wanted to share it, mostly for let other people know that you can donate been alive and that it is very gratifying, knowing that you could restore the health of a loved one.
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