April 1, 2011: Scheduled Kidney Transplant Day / Poem: My Third Kidney

Hello young kidneys wherever you are. There are songs about the heart and about the mind. "She's got legs" is a great line from ZZ Top but where is a song about the kidneys?


Daughter and mother

My diminishing kidney function is the result of taking lithium carbonate for 16.5 years for manic-depression, which I no longer have.
Mine were plump pink pills, generic.

They warn you this can happen but you never think it will. Lab results must be checked every 6 months. I went off in 2001. At that time I had 38 percent function but two years ago my kidney function worsened.

One reason may have been I took forbidden over-the-counter pain medication for sciatica for months at a time, kidneys be damned. The pain was excrucating.

My unsullied belly. They'll make a small incision in my abdomen, keep in my two diminishing kidneys which work at 16 percent efficiency, and will add my daughter Sarah's left kidney, aptly named Odysseus, after his long journey home.

Read about Sarah's adventures on her blog.

There's always something to worry about, right? I have utmost faith in my transplant surgeons, Radi Zaki, Stalin Campos, and one other dude.

It's the immunosuppressive drugs I worry about. They suppress your immune system. Ah-choo! However, my friend Freda has been on these drugs for years, and assures me she doesn't get sick. As I've mentioned my friend Denis Hazam who runs a similar support group to mine had a transplant five years ago and his immune system was never compromised.

What me worry? Who said that? Why Alfred E Neuman.

Didn't you just love Alfred of Mad Magazine when you were 12 years old?

Radi Zaki, MD, transplant surgeon, graduate of Cairo University, go freedom go!

He is ably assisted by this American-born talented young lady, flawed only by her coffee addiction



Completing the triumvirate is none other than Stalin Campos from El Salvador.



Now you see why I have nothing to worry about.

PS - In November of 2008 when unbeknownst to me my kidneys were getting worse, I had a TIA, very similar to this news announcer's which is captured live here.

Unlike her, however, I surmised exactly what was happening. I was at the Sunoco station in Hatboro w/Scott and when I went inside to pay, I began speaking gibberish. I went back in my car and began to drive home in order to take an aspirin and then drive directly to Abington Hospital.

I did not say a word.

Anything wrong? Scott asked.

I shook my head but said nothing.

I ran into the house and took two aspirins, then went back in the car, and drove straight to the hospital.

By the time we got there, I could talk again.

They kept me overnite and put me on blood pressure meds and aspirin.

My pressure is very good. I'm on three meds for it.

I should add that, at the time of my TIA, I was under the care of a free clinic at Abington Hospital, having foolishly given up my private health insurance. The care I got was actually quite good until my doctor Jennifer Shih, a resident whose work is followed by 'real doctors,' failed to follow-up about my high blood pressure. In fact, she had me on Lisinopril, which my nephroloogist said was bad for my kidneys.

The moral is easy. See a good knowledgeable doctor.

MY THIRD KIDNEY

the furious torrent
like summer rains
lessens
a drought in the
sunny sahara
tongueless
skulls
reflect the sky
but i
shall be saved
and pat my belly
where my rusty pair of
kidneys
still squeeze drops
from stone
still pump the soundless
rivers of blood
round and round
this old mother
like the grand mississippi
if it weren’t for voodoo potions
called pills
my inner channels
would laden be
with silt and rocks
too heavy to carry
and i quicker still
would rush headlong into
eternity’s sacred path
but for my daughter
my saviour
who once i carried on my hip
and watched her blue eyes turn
to brown and huge
will pass unto me
one of her sacred twins
thirty-seven years of
vibrant pissing
expert
flawless
will now come back home
brave ulysses bound for his own penelope
restless, he will grow to like
his strange new home
i will pour libations
through his tender
vessels
every morsel i eat
dedicated to his glory
together we shall marvel at
the first daffodil poking her
head in the garden
just the three of us
strolling in my garden in
my white bridal gown.