GAINING BACK TIME AS A RESULT OF MY TRANSPLANT.........

One of the initial joys of receiving my kidney transplant that continues to unfold, is not having to undergo the three times a week dialysis treatments I took 379 times from March 15, 2007 and August 22, 2009. Those more than 1,336 hours of dialysis were some of the most arduous, boring, diverting, and time consuming, trials I have ever experienced. And I am one of the lucky former kidney failure / dialysis patients, as although my transplant should have occurred almost two years sooner than it did, I dialysized for just less than two and a half years, when many transplant candidates and dialysis patients wait five to ten years or more, if indeed they are eligible for a transplant, waiting on a cadaver kidney. Were it not for my living donor, I too, would still be waiting 3-5 years longer to receive a cadaver kidney. The Mayo Clinic's research underscores the challenge. They find there are 77,000 Americans awaiting a kidney transplant and only 11,000 living donors. Available living donors to potential recipients being in the negative direction by a ratio of seven to one, is a major challenge. So too, there is a need for more persons willing to be organ donors after death, so that the wait for a cadaver kidney can be lessened for many more of those 77,000 Americans needing a transplant. Raising awareness and increasing the number of willing donors, is vitally and undeniably an important priority for the American people to meet. I am extremely grateful to my living donor Victor, for uniequivocally and generously donating a kidney to me. I will always be grateful to the Mayo Clinic Hospital Arizona Transplant Team and my surgeon, Dr. Moss, for expediting my transplant, after two years of frustrating delay in Sacramento. And the generous care, concern, support and help, of family, friends, and parishioners, especially the Helping Hands Ministry and Men's Club, of Presentation Parish. Seeing Mari Farnsworth, President of the Helping Hands Ministry Tuesday morning in the rectory caused me to think anew about how good the members of Helping Hands were to volunteer many, many hours of their time, at the dinner and rush hours of the evening, to transport me from the Orangevale Dialysis Center back to the Presentation rectory. Dave McAffee, President of the Men's Club, is also the parish Communications Director at Presentation, who I see weekly in the parish office. He and members of the Men's Club stepped up during my post transplant convalescence, providing weekend relief caregivers for me, while I was in Phoenix. I offer this transplant journal reflection on my experiences four and a half weeks after being back in Sacramento, to spur deeper thought on all our parts, about how we can effectively assist and advocate for dialysis patients and kidney transplant candidates and constructively contribute to increasing the number of living donors and cadaver kidney donations available to more of the 77,000 waiting recipients for kidney transplants. What can you do to make a difference to a dialysis patient whose likelihood for a kidney transplant may depend on what you do, or do not do, to positively address and impact the challenge before us ? Prayer, Generosity, Discipleship, Gospel Values, will cause you to respond in far greater ways than you might imagine.
In Jesus the Christ, Our Lord and God, Fr. Troy