Kenders' Musings

(this is an edited repost)

Current events dictate that I repost this with added info. This was written while the world watched the fight rage over Terri Schiavo, and the euthanasia and eugenics arguments were flying fast and heavy. The new info is that my latest transplant is slowly failing, and a return to dialysis is in the works. But this has always been a possibility, and there is no warranty on used parts. I think I received this latest kidney from a liberal. It has worked for three and a half years and is now wanting to retire. Hopefully it isn't trying to unionize the rest of my organs.

Anyway.

You may be asking yourself about that title.

My goal here is to explain why I am so personally AGAINST euthanasia, eugenics and health care "rationing".

If these things had been standard procedure when I was very young I would be dead.

You see, I was born with a very small birth defect. In the bottom of your bladder is a small flap that drops down to allow urination. My flap didn't drop down, it opened up, like a trap door in a floor.

By the time I was two and a half the constant backflow of urine had extended my ureters and caused hydronephrosis in my left kidney and destroyed my right kidney. When I wouldn't quit crying I was taken to emergency at childrens hospital in L.A. Rushed into the OR for exploratory surgery, the damage was found, the right kidney removed and as much repair work done as possible. I was in there for 12 hours.

When they wheeled me out I was, in my grandfathers words, "battleship gray", and the doctors tried to sedate my mother before they told her their prognosis.

Their prognosis was I would live a week, at most, and they gave her a card for a funeral home down the street from the hospital. Many months later the Doctors said I would need dialysis by the time I was seven, and if I didn't recieve a transplaant by the time I was 14 I would die.

I went on dialysis in my twenties.

I have had countless surgeries, mostly standard procedures every two years growing up as the scar tissue in my bladder needed cleaning out. That is how I know I stopped growing around 12 years old. I haven't needed that procedure since.

Side effects have caused me to have surgeries on both of my legs, (dome osteotomy of the lower extremities), my parathyroid taken out and a small piece implanted in my arm, a fistula for dialysis in my left arm, and two transplants.

Mothers day weekend this year is the three year anniversary for the current kidney.

All through this I have never taken what a doctor said about my prognosis or abilities as boundries or what would happen. I took it as what they THOUGHT may happen and as a challenge to prove them wrong.

Until I was six I had a nephrostomy tube in my side with a bag for urine output slung over my shoulder. I had the constant refrain during those years of "Be Careful" and "GET OUT OF THAT TREE!!!!!" and "You can't do that".

They were wrong. I could, and I did.

I have lived a great life so far, and have such fulfillment as to be almost unfair.
I have a huge group of wonderful friends.
A great son.
I am a great horseman, and the only thing I cannot do with a horse is surgery and slap shoes on them, and I am learning the latter.
I have seen history made, sometimes right in front of me.
I lived to see the Berlin Wall fall and the Soviet union collapse.
I cried when Challenger went down, and cheered when Baghdad fell.
I have seen the sunrise over the spires of Churchill Downs, and sink into the ocean from Del Mar.
I have known tragedy and heartbreak, love and contentment and everything in between.
I have watched friends die and my son be born.
In short I have lived.
My life kicks ass.

If health care had been rationed when I was a child all of this I would have missed.

Who are we to decide, as fallable humans, who lives and dies?