Frightening the Family

As anyone who goes through an experience with any kind of illness will tell you, it is critical to have a good support system surrounding you. I have that, and it has made this whole process much easier to go through.

I've written before about my wife, but it goes without saying that without her in this with me, I would be floundering.

My family has been great too, but it's clearer to me now that all of this stuff is a bit frightening to them. I send out updates to everyone as things happen, because we're scattered all over the place. E-mail updates seemed to make the most sense.

I usually hear from a few people with every update. Words of encouragement usually, but sometimes they have more questions too, so I like being able to answer those for them.

When the whole transplant thing became more realistic, and I was writing about this to them, the replies became a little less frequent. Admittedly, I may have caused this, because in each of the updates I was explaining how "easy" it was to donate, and in each of the transplant updates, I encouraged them to get tested to see if we would be a match.

I know how big of a request it is to ask a family member to donate a kidney. My mistake in all of this has been to discuss it in a way that makes it sound like it's a walk in the park. Part of that comes from us getting more comfortable with the whole transplant process, to the extent that it really doesn't seem like a big deal. The other reason I took such a positive approach to explaining the process, was that I didn't want to make it sound like some crazy out of this world thing that looks like a last resort.

So, along the way, I feel like I did the very thing I was trying to avoid. I've since sent out an update that was supposed to help people feel more at ease with saying no, because I don't want anyone feeling guilty about not wanting to donate, or not being comfortable with the whole donation idea.

The other thing I noticed in my updates and during those times when we would be gathered together for a birthday celebration or something was that my kidneys always seemed to be the center of the conversations I was having. There I was, letting the kidney disease become the thing that defined me to my family.

With all that in mind, I was absolutely ecstatic when we got together with family on Friday, and my kidneys never came up. It felt like a breath of fresh air, and it showed everyone that I wasn't going to follow them around and nag them about whether or not they wanted to get tested. Maybe it was a missed opportunity to recruit, but there will be other times for that, and maybe, the space will encourage some to ask more questions. We'll see.