October 27 Transplant Story

I have some time plus energy on this amazingly beautiful fall day.  Somehow it has all inspired me to set down and try to put a little into words about the most incredible gift of  renewed life that I have been given.   The story ultimately began around the 14th of March, 2007.  Tom was in Florida for about a week taking some training for some certificates in the IT world.  Our dear friends, Randy and Sheryl Saine were looking after me and Braedon while Tom was gone.  One afternoon about half way through the week, I developed a nose bleed, not real bad just annoyingly constant.  I finally packed up Braedon and went down to our family doctors in Old Colorado City.  He immediately tried to carterize it and that only produced a gushing nose bleed.  After sending me to an ENT doctor downtown to get checked out they sent me home to bedrest till it stopped!  Yeah, right!

Well, being the brave one that I thought I was I walked around all evening with a bath towel on my nose.  Finally, Braedon went to bed and he is such a great little go to bedder, he was asleep in no time!  I remember falling into our bed and even though it was still bleeding, and out of exhaustion I fell sound asleep.  Suddenly, at 3am I believe God woke me.  There was so much blood on me, the bed and pouring onto the floor. Immediately I called Randy and Sheryl, they came right over. While they were on their way, I called 911.  Let me tell you, there is no more blessed sight then 4 big burly firefighters coming to your rescue in the middle of the night.  Randy rode with me in the ambulance and Sheryl took sweet Braedon home with her.  After that the next two weeks are nothing but a blur.  Tom came as quickly as he could, however he had a hard time getting a quick flight out of Miami.  My mom made it  before him somehow and during that time of waiting for my family, I had several very dear families, Tim and Cristina Wright, Randy and Sheryl Saine, and Ty and Amy Cahill, setting at my bedside and comforting me.

Well, the summary of the story up to this point is:  hemalitic anemia had set in probably several days earlier, causing my blood counts to drop suddenly,  then because I am on Coumadin for my heart valve it became very concentrated in my system, thus I had NO clotting factor in my blood.  For anyone medically minded, upon my arrival to the hospital, I had a hemoglobin of 3.0.  So, 22 bags of blood later I was feeling mighty fine!   However, that is when I was made aware that due to an infection that they had also found and my kidneys starving for blood I was in complete renal failure.  I cannot even begin to express the emotions of those first few weeks.  Without the love and constant support of my family and friends around me I would have never had the courage to face the next three and one half years of dialysis.  Ok, I cannot even now go back to those days without weeping, so let me get control I’ll be back in a minute!

Well, three times a week off to the dialysis center for a 4-5 hour session on the machine!  My days were Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.  For the next two years, that was my life.  I am so thankful for the family and friends that stayed right by me comforting me, encouraging me and most of all constantly reminding me that God was really there whether I could see, feel, or hear Him or not. That He truly did have a plan for my life and I just needed to be content to take each day that I was given and not look far ahead and become discouraged.  I will admit that during this time, I felt very much that God had deserted me.  I have never felt so empty and dry at any other time in my life.

Finally, after much planning, Tom was really in a place that he needed to move forward in a job, and so the search began for a new job for him.  During  these two years I was able to get back to nursing and loved it, that really helped to keep my focus off of me!  I was to the point at this time though that the docter felt I should look at quitting work, as my heart was not holding up to dialysis very well.

God graciously lead us to Indianapolis in a job change for Tom.  This got us back in range to a little more family support than we had in Colorado.  It was hard to leave so many dear dear friends, but in God’s good time we were able to settle here and establish friends here as well!

When we first came to Indy, I started out at the dialysis center, but even at my first session here the social worker started talking to me about doing a new program at home called NX Stage Dialysis at home.  It really seemed to fit our life much better than taking off to the center at 5am every other morning.  With little Braedon it was perfect!  So, we went through the training, and moved home for what would be the next approx. 2 years.

About 15 months ago one miraculous day,  a sweet girl that I grew up with happened upon Tom’s facebook page.   After growing up as kids together in Alaska, I had gone my way to nursing school and she had gone hers.  During my last year of Nursing School, Tom had gone off to Kentucky to teach at a small Bible College there.  He knew Mary, my donor from there, but Mary didn’t realize that he had married me!  After all these years, that day the she found Tom on FB she put the puzzle together.  Tom had posted that day the urgent need that we had for a kidney.  Mary contacted Tom shortly  after that and told us that she would like to be tested.  She would be my donor if all worked out to be a match.

And so the testing began.  No small feat I must say!  At times it seemed like they took so many tubes of blood that it was quit  possible we might not have any left!  In the end,  my Donor Angel Mary was a PERFECT match!  God is so good!  She could have been a good match and the doctors could have made it work, but God blessed us once again with His Perfect match!

So after sorting out scheduals and rearranging scheduals, and planning and planning, the Big Day finally arrived!  October 13th, 2010.  We got up at 5:30 to get to the hospital by 7am.  After that everything happened so fast.  I can only remember being so excited I could hardly stand it!  I remember walking down that hallway into the surgical suite with tears of joy running down my face and after crawling up on that awefully narrow table looking up and begging the anesthesiologist to put me out I just couldn’t stand it!  Thankfully she smiled and said “OK Girlie, this is the best day of your life!”    That was it, next thing I knew I woke up with a nice nurse looking down at me saying the surgery went flawlessly!  The surgeon said that the kidney never stopped producing urine and he had a hard time stitching the ureter in place because he would position the needle and here would come a big drop of urine throwing his needle off!  This is really amazing because normally the donor kidney kinda goes into shock for 24-48 hours before starting to produce urine.  I had a full urine bag by the time I left recovery!

So, 3 surgeons, 100 staff members standing ready to do their job in our surgical suite, 4 hours for Mary, 5 hours for me, and my new life began!  Oh yes, I must include the 1.5 million dollars as well!  Thank God for insurance!   I think best of all, we had the most awesome support team of family and friends standing by through it all lifting prayers to Heaven through the entire experience.

I will bring this to a quick end.  I know that there is countless more events and miracles to share , but that will come another time.  To end this I just wanted to share one more special moment that I had, that I never will forget.  I believe it was the morning of day 5 after surgery, I had been moved out of ICU the evening before, the nurse came in and removed my foley catheter.  About thirty  minutes later I felt the urge and what a feeling to be able to urinate on my own again.  A feeling a joy overwhelmed me and I couldn’t stop laughing.  Every one in my room started laughing with me and it was a moment of joy I will never forget.  Never forget to thank God for all the blessings of your life!   Blessings!     Bethany