The day I have been waiting for, hoping for, longing for, and fearing just the same!
I took off work for this! And I never take off work! I work seven days, morning through evening.
I’m going in for an mri, ct scan, ekg & vascular testing, chest x-ray, blood testing, a urinalysis, and who knows what else! Six hours straight of non stop medical testing head to toe at University of Pennsylvania Hospital Kidney Transplant Center! Yippee! I’m over the moon! Floating in the clouds. This is the day that will determine (along with a couple other things, but this is the main thing) if my kidney gets a new home in a couple months! 😱
I’m beyond honored just for this opportunity to be evaluated. It took a three hour psych evaluation, some preliminary medical testing, interviews with the transplant team, applications and paperwork, dr appointments, to be qualified to get to this point. I’m so thankful we’re finally here!!
If all goes as planned, out of the blue a random unsuspecting person will get The Call that 20+ years will suddenly, unexpectedly, be added to their life with a greatly enhanced quality so they can live an almost normal life. That warms my heart.
Many years ago I read a story in a magazine about a man who donated his kidney to a random stranger because he had two healthy kidneys while someone else did not even have one. That inspired me and planted the seed in my mind. I just knew that would be me one day, and here we are all these years later!
No matter what, in the end, at least I can say I tried. 💚
I’m wishing you a beautiful day or night wherever in the world you are!
Never underestimate the difference YOU can make in the lives of others. Step forward, reach out and help. This week reach to someone that might need a lift ❤️
I’m inspired to share my experience of a very brief but sweet friendship that took place nearly 20 years ago.
What inspires me to share this is a comment in a somewhat recent social media thread I saw. Someone said if a very young couple is happily married or in a romantic relationship for only a couple years and one of them dies, the other will eventually forget about them by middle or old age and hardly be able to remember them and lose all feelings for them, and it will be like it never happened. I don’t know if it’s that person’s actual experience or just an assumption. Recently I saw another comment similar to that sentiment about how relationships lasting of a short duration don’t ultimately matter. For some reason that brought me pain even though I have never experienced this myself. I just found it sad that someone can be so easily forgotten, especially someone who at one point was so much a significant part of someone’s life. At one point they were each other’s everything and now it’s like that person and that love never even existed?
And I realized it’s not true, at least not for everyone. Even a very fleeting relationship, romantic or other, can have an everlasting impact or inspire lifelong memories.
When I was eighteen years old I met another eighteen year old girl named Asheen. We had a college class together. We were both quiet girls. She sat in the back of the class, and I sat in the front. One day after a class ended, she walked up to me and asked me if I wanted to have lunch with her. I said yes and was very happy for the invitation. I was very shy but very social and always up for having a new friend. I currently had no friends except high school friends who I rarely saw or talked to after graduation and a couple acquaintances I met over the Summer but did not see them often after Summer ended. It wasn’t enough socialization for me.
She bought me lunch that day. We chatted for a while, and she told me about her religion and beliefs. She was a Muslim girl who wore a burqa. I never saw her without it. She was born in Syria, and her family moved to the U.S when she was younger. She had no problems with people of other faiths or no faith at all. She told me homosexuality was against her religion, but she personally had nothing against it. After that, she would frequently surprise me with lunch that she would buy me. It would make me laugh because she was not permitted to eat certain food and would always adhere to her religion and her family’s wishes, but she would buy me the food that she wouldn’t eat. She would say “I can’t eat this because of my religion, but you can.” We would both laugh at it. I loved how she was so religious but so laid back. She never judged anyone or anything even though she took her religion seriously for herself.
We connected over the fact that at 18 years old we both never been on a date or kissed a boy. In her case it was because of her religion, in my case it was because I secretly never liked boys like that. I was usually so embarrassed to tell people I never been kissed or been on a date. Most people I lied to about it and said I did have experience with boys. But with her, I felt I could tell her anything. She was a safespace. I did not tell her I never even like boys, just that, like her, I had no experience. She did not judge, feel shocked, or require an explanation like many/most people when finding out someone has little to no dating experience.
The thing we connected most through was our sense of humor. We could just laugh and laugh at everything and nothing.
Everyday we would talk and have lunch together and laugh together. She was my only consistent friend.
The memory I love most is one day when we were walking up a street together laughing hysterically, belly laughs so deep we could hardly talk. It was the kind of laughter and joy and silliness only an 18 year old or someone in that age bracket can experience. That’s not to say older people can’t laugh hysterically and be joyful and silly. I’m still like this today! But it’s different when you’re eighteen years old. I can tap into that memory and feel it still.
After that college semester, Asheen transferred to a different university, and we lost touch.
Our friendship was very brief, but I remember it vividly. I probably wouldn’t recognize her today if I saw her. But I remember her well back then.
My friendship with Asheen reminds me that out of the blue when we need it most, someone can reach out to touch us for the better. It reminds me that someone can be thinking of us and we don’t even know it. And it just gives me the gift of sweet memories to always cherish and smile at. In general I don’t think of Asheen or our old friendship very often. But when I do remember, it fills me with warmth. Sometimes I even miss her and having a friend like that. We were so different in our upbringing and culture and beliefs, but at our core we were so similar, and the differences only made our friendship unique not challenging.
Even a brief relationship at a young age with someone we never see again can have a lifelong impact. There may be someone you touched for the better many years ago sitting here today remembering how your made their life better even in just the briefest encounter.
If you have an experience with a brief relationship many years ago that still has a positive impact today, please share!
Sending love to all and hope you are having a beautiful day or night wherever in the world you are
Be the reason someone still believes in good people. ❤️
This is me in the park recently! Great news!! Penn kidney transplant team said they are confident I am going to be accepted as a living kidney donor! They said recently during my hours long psych evaluation that my medical/family/individual/health…history is ideal for being a living donor. I am very unlikely to have any surgical related complications or complications relating to only having one kidney. They are not concerned at all about my jugular vein situation (still going to be getting a scan on it though just to be sure, I shared here before that my jugular vein seems to be obstructed/malfunctioning). They are slightly less confident than they would be because of a kidney stone I had in 2007. They said that may put me at elevated risk for currently having a kidney stone that I don’t know about that they could see on the CT scan next week. They said that’s likely not the case but to prepare myself for the possibility of rejection if so. A kidney stone in someone who only has one kidney can result in instant kidney failure. So if I have an asymptomatic stone in there somewhere, I’m out! Let’s hope not because I want to help someone so much!! Hearing this did give me slight anxiety about possibly being rejected, but at least even if it were true, it wouldn’t be a health threat to me. So there’s that. If anything, I thought the vein would be what gets me rejected. Lol That thing has been giving me health anxiety even though I kind of like it 😁😆
My 24 hour urine jug that came in the mail as a surprise to me 😆 It’s to see if I have a kidney stone even though they’re also going to do a CT scan This is the man I’m trying to donate my kidney to! His name is Don, and he is 74 years old and in urgent need of a kidney. He doesn’t have much longer to live. He doesn’t know I exist yet. If I’m healthy enough, the transplant team will call him and tell him he has a kidney donor and that 20+ years will be added to his life and the quality of life, greatly enhanced.
Here is my social media post:
This man needs a kidney transplant and is having great difficulty finding a donor. He doesn’t have much longer and can’t wait for a deceased donor.
Around 200 strangers volunteered to give him one of their own kidneys. They were all rejected by the transplant teams. It’s extremely difficult to be accepted as a living donor. Nearly everyone has something that can disqualify them.
It’s so heartwarming though to think that 200 strangers volunteered. 200 people volunteered to have their organ removed while still alive to save a stranger’s life. And imagine how many more would if they knew about him.
This is not as rare as people may think! And it’s becoming even more common. There are so many caring people out there who would go to any length even for someone they never met and may never meet. Because everyone is someone.
If you think you may be qualified or even not(the transplant team will decide), please try to help! I think they can send the kidney on an airplane if you aren’t close in location. He lives in Pennsylvania, where I am. I am currently being evaluated, and things are looking good. But just in case, it would help if more people would try. 💚🫘
I hope so much he gets his perfect kidney soon whether mine or someone else’s.
Here is another social media post of mine that is kind of funny lol :
I was in the park this morning sitting in the grass trying to have one of those zoom-like meetings where we can see people live through the screen. Random dogs kept insisting on coming up to me, and one was 💩ing in back of me 😆 (maybe they sense I’m a pet nanny or maybe just thought I was down for a visit with them because I was in the grass 😍)
Now, I think it’s funny, but when it was all happening I was a tad annoyed that people were all coming around me walking dogs and stuff when I was talking to people through a screen trying to impress them and show them I’m qualified (I was also being asked awkward questions for strangers standing next to me to overhear, like “Have you accepted money for s*x, have you had s*x with someone with an sti, have you had s*x with someone who has used a needle not prescribed to them by their doctor, have you had s*x with someone who has had s*x with someone who…, have you tested positive for Syphilis or Chlamydia…? 😆 Not that these should be taboo topics or anything or that anyone should feel awkward/embarrassed about that stuff itself, just awkward in this context where random strangers and their dogs were basically in a therapy session with me. I couldn’t be home and had nowhere else to go so had to have a three hour psych evaluation in a busy park) . Lol 😆
(I censor words that can get our accounts suspended on social media or can be trigger words for some people with trauma history)
💚🫘
I am so happy and overwhelmed with joy throughout this whole process. I have faith that it will all work out, but even if in the end the transplant team decides it’s best for me not to donate for whatever reason, I will still be so thankful and honored that I made it to this point and will continue to bring awareness to living kidney donation.
The road is long With many a winding turn That leads us to who knows where Who knows where But I’m strong Strong enough to carry him He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother
So on we go His welfare is my concern No burden is he to bear We’ll get there For I know He would not encumber me He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother
This is my favorite version of this song. It is so beautiful. ❤️ Let’s help each other whenever we can and carry each other through. This video here has some v!olent scenes in it, but I’m sure there’s other videos with this song that don’t have scenes like that. The song is about helping others and seeing everyone as our own family.
This is my schedule for medical testing this Friday! I blocked out the numbers in case they don’t want us to share, don’t know what they’re for. ❤️
Living kidney donation is usually a six month long process beginning with the application to volunteer to give one of our kidneys to someone else and ending with the surgery if we are accepted. The six months is full of interviews, paperwork, medical and psychiatric testing. It can seem overwhelming at some points but is well worth it to save a life and enhance the quality. If all goes well my surgery should be in September or October at latest. I haven’t been accepted to donate yet, but things at the moment are looking up!
I’m confident that it will all work out in our favor! 💚🫘
Topic: Death, dying, illness, end of life, acceptance
I watched “Extremis” and “End Game” on Netflix, two non fiction documentaries about what it’s like to be terminally ill and what it’s like to be caregivers (doctors/family) of terminally ill people. They aren’t negative or unpleasant documentaries even though they show real sick people dying in their hospital beds or hooked up to machines with tubes in their bodies, and grieving families. And while they are full of intense emotion that is sure to provoke intense emotion in the viewers, they aren’t even sad. Sadness is for sure one emotion that is involved in the documentaries, even some of the healthcare professional people display sadness and distress at seeing their patients and patients’ families like that, but it’s not the core of them. They remind us that end of life is inevitable, there’s no getting around it. They portray it as not inherently bad and not inherently medical, even when a young person gets sick and dies, it’s just part of living. I think many, even most of us, tend to forget that or at least have difficulty accepting it especially when we are in the situation either struggling with illness ourselves or knowing someone, personally, who is.
I have to have medical testing done to see what is in my neck compressing my jugular vein, it could be serious or minor. Occasionally I experience anxiety and anticipate the intense fear that is coming having to have a scan on my head/neck to see what is inside my body obstructing the vein connected to my heart & brain. Some points it’s literally unbearable just to think of. I found that the documentaries and the acceptance attitude of illness, death, and dying ease my health anxiety. Death & dying are going to happen whether it’s in utero, one day old, 6 months old, 5 years old, 20 years old, 15 years old, 38 years old, 45 years old, 50 years old, 65 years old, 78 years old, or 80+ years old. There’s no point trying to reject it or cling to life when our own time is up. It’s easier to have this philosophy than feel it with emotion and feel it physically. Intellectually we can know it is what it is and has to happen sooner or later, but that doesn’t mean emotionally it’s easy to accept.
While I hold that philosophy also and know it’s the truth, I felt my body physically rejecting the idea that it could be sick or dying in the not very distant future, it recoiled, tensed, and ached at the thought and even felt gripped in panic on occasion, even when my mind said it is what it is. But seeing the scenes in the documentaries of how terminally ill people experience end of life and the compassionate doctors reminding us that life & death are inextricably linked, and the end is coming to us all at one point or another, eased that fear. To see those dying people in their beds and see them through the lens of knowing that will be all of us, even me, one day, eases some of the anxiety. To see them as other and keep hoping against hope that that won’t be us one day only aggravates the anxiety, even exacerbating it to terror level fear, clinging to false hope that we know deep inside is false doesn’t help. Accepting what is eventually coming whether it be tomorrow or in a few decades is so much more bearable. Hope only brings anxiety when it means clinging to something that can never be. Sometimes hope works against us and acceptance is more fitting and in our best interest. It’s realistic for most young & healthy people to hope that won’t be us soon. But it could be. And accepting that it’s coming sooner or later and seeing ourselves in the dying can ease health anxiety or anxiety about the future.
As I watched those sick people of various ages in the documentaries, I found it helpful to see those people as those who got there before me instead of seeing them as people who are experiencing something terrible that I hope I never will. I have a choice to lean into the hope or lean into the acceptance. Each one has their place at different points. One may serve us at one point and the other at a different point depending upon circumstances and various factors and context.
There is no sense of “other” in these documentaries when interacting with dying people, it isn’t like us lucky heathy & them poor sick people and no sense of “those poor unfortunate souls,” there is a constant awareness that later we’ll all be in their place, even the healthy, strong, young ones now taking care of the fragile sick will be laying there in the beds of the sick & dying later. It’s just a knowing. Instead of us & them, it’s only us, in this together all getting our own turn whenever our turn arrives, which it will. Countless others have walked this path before us and countless more will after us. We’re just one in an endless cycle of an infinite amount of others. I found that a combination of my somewhat advanced age, my potential health concern, and these documentaries really made that sink in for me. Sometimes the feeling is a neutral one, and other occasions it’s unpleasant or anxiety provoking. But ultimately, it just is.
Inherently, dying isn’t good or bad and just is a fact of life. The negative connotation is something that society projects onto it. Of course it’s sad to think about not being here anymore and may seem unfair to be diagnosed as terminally ill at 45 years old right in the middle of life or at 20 years old when it hardly even had a chance to begin or at 65 years old before even getting a chance to be old, and it’s devastating for friends & family and others who know and love the sick & dying. But viewing it through that lens of compassionate acceptance (not indifference) and it being inherently inescapable makes it more calming.
And of course dying in very old age is different than dying in youth or middle age of an illness that comes out of the blue and shocks us. But no matter what, we have to face our mortality at one point or another at whatever age it comes to us. This isn’t to say prevention is pointless or that we should reject treatment if it can help extend life with a good quality and isn’t to say fear, grief, devastation surrounding the idea of death, dying, & illness aren’t valid, and not saying it’s not tragic when someone gets sick or dies early, only to say it is ultimately inescapable, and helps to remember that with gentle acceptance.
Also, all patients should have doctors this compassionate and warm.
I don’t think my issue is serious, and my whole body feels healthy and energetic and full of life, I look healthy and have all healthy medical test results other than a seemingly obstructed jugular vein on the left side and a severe headache here & there. But it can be easy on occasion to get carried away with dark thoughts, and once anxiety comes along and latches onto a terrible dark thought, it can be hard to let it go, it can grow and take on a life of its own, making up a big story that there is no real basis for. And it can be hard to live with that story playing over and over and hard to see with the reasonable part of the brain that that story is unlikely and that there’s no true evidence for it. During those moments of distress and panic and anticipation it’s more calming & comforting to think why NOT now instead of trying to reject it and wonder why it has to be now instead of much later. It’s more gentle and easier to bear while leaning into that aspect that it’s coming sooner or later anyway, coming to us all.
What’s the difference if it’s 37 year old me or 87 year old me?
When it’s our turn to go, it’s our turn. 💔❤️
Here is a recent picture of me. If you look closely at my neck, you can see where blood is pooling into the valve of my vein making it protrude. This is the vein that connects to the heart & brain, and when my blood is trying to flow to my heart as it should, it can’t get past something that is blocking it and is backing up into my head. That itself is not necessarily very serious (there are other veins sending blood to my heart), but whatever is causing it could be. Next week I’ll be getting a scan to see inside my body to find the cause then will have to wait for the phone call with the results. That thought is occasionally very distressing. Sometimes it’s deep sadness while other occasions it’s overwhelming fear. But overall, I don’t let it affect my joy each day. I am at a point where I can hope for the best, but I also lean into that acceptance of uncertainty and an eventual end whether it be soon or in a few decades.
It’s the heart that fears the breaking
That never learns to dance.
It’s the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying
That never learns to live ❤️
Death twitches my ear; ‘Live,’ he says… ‘I’m coming’ 🖤
I am wishing love, light, & health to everyone everywhere and hoping you are having a beautiful day or night wherever in the world you are. ❤️
Xoxo Kim 😍
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