Who's the boss? Apparently, not me.
In which I learn I am no longer the boss.
It began, as so many things do these days, with a post on Facebook.
A woman I’ve known for many years – we live in the same small town and went to the same beach club – posted that her 26yo daughter’s kidney function was rapidly declining and that she was in need of a donor.
“Kerry needs a kidney,” I texted my two daughters. “Go get tested.” And then I proceeded to create my own Facebook post and blast it out to my almost 1,000 "friends."
My older daughter, Annie, who grew up with Kerry, immediately filled out a donor screening questionnaire and quickly advanced to the next stage, which was to get a blood test. We laughed at the time that the hospital, New York Presbyterian/Weill-Cornell, was an easy 20 blocks south of her apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
It turns out, Annie and Kerry shared the same blood type (B- and B+) and weirdly, some genetic material, which would help make Kerry's body more receptive to a transplant.
Annie was then asked if she would come to Weill-Cornell for a day of thorough testing, where the kidney transplant team would assess everything from her lungs to her mental health. I took the day off from work and slept at her apartment to accompany her the next day to the hospital for testing.
*****
Now, up to this point, you might be thinking, “Good for you, mom, for supporting this generous gesture,” but that would not be entirely accurate. Indeed, I was acting like I thought it was a great idea but secretly, I was kind of just going along with it before I shut the whole thing down. I was letting Annie THINK I was cool with her giving her kidney away when really, I was just humoring her. There was no way I was going to let it actually happen.
So when she received news that she had been cleared to be a donor for Kerry and it was time to decide whether she was going to go ahead with it, I began to clear my throat and say things like, “Now, don’t make any rash decisions,” and “Hasn’t anyone else come up as a match?”
As it began to seem like Annie was getting really serious about donating her kidney, when she seemed to be doing more research on the subject of organ donation than her usual searches for best mascara or some other beauty product on her radar, I knew I was in trouble. This is when I started getting nervous and decided to start reminding her just who was boss. “I’m going to need to sign off on whatever you decide, you know,” I told her as we Facetimed one night.
“MOM! I am a grown woman,” she yelled, those big blue eyes growing very wide on the other side of the screen. “You are not the boss of me.”
*****
When the kids were young, I actually was the boss of them. It wasn’t until my oldest hit adolesence that things began to fall apart. Up until then, when I said, “No” it meant, “No.” The kids knew never to ask for toys at Target or gum standing on line at the supermarket checkout. And one of my best tricks was threatening to count to three. If one of the kids was resisting my orders, I’d look at them hard and say, “One!” and generally, they’d stamp their little feet and give up.
Once, my oldest was pretending not to hear me calling him out of the ocean to go home, he kept dipping his head under the waves in make believe oblivion. I stood at the shoreline, saw him quickly glance at me, and held up my pointer finger. He went underwater once more and surfaced to see me with a second finger in the air and he began to swim to shore. As he passed me to go dry off to go home, he grumbled, “What is even going to happen when you get to three?”
I tried to channel that energy into making Annie see her way out of donating her kidney but to no avail. I complained to my younger daughter, Maddie, who was like, “It’s your own fault woman. You kept talking about it on Facebook.”
I brought it up with my therapist, who helped put it all in perspective, as is often the case. I told her I supported Annie donating her kidney in theory, but the reality of it – of someone cutting into her body and extracting an actual organ – freaked me out. But my therapist helped me take myself out of the situation and see things from Annie’s vantage point. She asked me to consider how in the end making an incredible gift to someone could benefit Annie and give deeper meaning to her own life.
And so I moved to the acceptance stage. Annie told Kerry she wanted to donate her kidney and Kerry cried in thanks. I think that’s been one of the most moving experiences for me, to see how thankful Kerry’s entire family has been not only for Annie’s gift but of our family’s support of her decision.
I was also comforted by the fact that Annie and Kerry had separate teams that made decisions based purely on what was best for their particular patient. If one kidney was stronger than the other, the recipient would receive the weaker one and if losing a kidney would have even the smallest consequence for Annie, the team would not go ahead with it. This is exactly how Kerry's mom got knocked out of the running to donate. She had a tiny thing that had the smallest percentage of hurting her down the road, and the doctors rejected her as a donor.
I also stopped mentioning the surgery to other people. On the whole, I could tell people thought it was nuts and once I was okay with Annie's decision, I had to hold onto that and not care about what other people thought. I had to know in my heart that it was a well thought out and generous act. Also, that it wasn't my decision to make.
*****
Surgery was scheduled for April and then, COVID struck and was put on hold. And then all of a sudden it was rescheduled for the beginning of June, just in time for protests going on throughout New York City. Oh, and I wasn’t allowed in the hospital and had to watch Annie and Kerry walk in alone early one morning last week to undergo major surgery.
Maddie and I drove back to park and wait it out in Annie’s apartment, where I cried and vaped a CBD pen and tried to remain calm. A patient advocate – some well-meaning, young-sounding guy named Byron – reached out to keep me apprised of Annie’s status and eventually told me she was in recovery and in some pain.
I’m sure that eventually, Byron began to regret reaching out to me initially from his cellphone, because I kept calling and texting to get more information about Annie’s condition. I’d even called the nurse’s station on the floor where they’d brought her and was told to call back in a few hours, and went into my best imitation of Shirley Maclaine towards the end of Terms of Endearment when she went nuts at the nurse’s station, trying to get her dying daughter pain meds. When Annie called me herself, sounding groggy and weepy, the first thing she said is that she heard I’d been making a lot of phone calls.
Finally, I thought to call Annie’s transplant team coordinator and in no time, she was given pain medication and transferred to a room on Kerry’s floor, as they had been promised. When they were finally able, the girls shuffled the halls like old ladies pushing their IV poles and compared what they were being fed and whether either had gone to the bathroom yet (apparently, getting the intestines back up and running is a bid deal).
Maddie and I packed up a few days later and went to wait in front of the hospital for Annie to be wheeled downstairs and I got a spot in line with all the taxis. After a while, there was a knock at my window and I rolled down to find a cabbie telling me I had to move. “What do you want me to do?” I snapped back. “I’m waiting for my daughter who just donated a kidney,” and that shut that gentleman down. He shrugged his shoulders and moved away and I made a mental note of how effective pulling out the kidney card could be.
And that has pretty much been that. Waze brought us straight through Midtown Manhattan, through the deserted heart of Times Square, to take the Lincoln Tunnel home and Annie was greeted by flowers and signs her teenage brother made welcoming her home. Maddie and I organized a surprise car parade for Sunday for folks to honk and cheer for Annie’s act of kindness and slowly she began to feel more like herself (minus a kidney).
It has been pointed out more than once by the children during our quarantine together that I can be a micromanager. That me observing someone browning garlic over her shoulder or commenting on the method someone uses to light the grill is not appreciated. That my constant critiques make the kids feel like they’re inept and can’t do anything right, which is probably not the most effective management skill if I really was their boss. You need to build people up, not tear them down.
So I’ve learned a lot through all this. The need for live organ donors is a real and important thing and something I plan on writing a lot about in the future. I’ve also discovered that my daughter, Annie, is the strongest person I know. And also, that if we were trapped in a paper bag, Maddie and I would still find ways to entertain ourselves.
And finally, it seems that after almost 28 years thinking I can control my four children, that is no longer the case (well, minus the teenager). My job now is that of a support staff member who can offer opinions when asked but whose main role is to love them unconditionally. That whatever their decisions and whatever the outcomes, I will always be there for them.
Whether they have one kidney or two.
Me when I can't be in the hospital when my daughter is undergoing a kidney transplant. Apologies to Byron.
FRIDAY FAVES
I don’t know about you, but when something happens to someone I know – like the loss of a loved one or medical issue – I never know what to do. Instead, I overthink for a week or two and eventually do nothing. So the outpouring we have received following Annie’s donation has been an eye opener into how to help families dealing with emotional upheaval. Pretty much: something is better than nothing (duly noted). Here are the highlights:
Dinners. We have been so lucky to have had someone show up at our door with an assortment of serving pieces filled with food pretty much every day for the last week, which has been the greatest gift. Some of my girlfriends even fed my sons while we were in the city waiting for Annie to be discharged last Friday. We joked that one of the meals was like loaves and fishes, easily feeding not just me and the kids but their dad and one of the girls’ friends for an impromptu sit down last weekend. I was emotionally drained by the time we returned from our NYC stay over and could not have imagined having to go back to coming up with meals, pandemic food shopping and cooking. These meals let me get my wits about me first.
Some lovely friend sent this package that offered comfort for the body and soul.
I am officially a fan of the gift basket. We got this one when we arrived home and in the first few days, I often pointed people looking for something to eat in its direction.
A bunch of gals sent over a dinner from one of our favorite takeout places last night and when it arrived, my daughter and I were like, “There’s no way this is going to feed all of us,” and then we ended up having leftovers.
Someone included a bag of these sweet frozen treats to pop in the oven and they lived up to the hype.
Not having to shop and cook freed me up to read our book club book, which was a good thing since this month it was my pick. Not sure if that colored the experience or if reading the majority of it in a couple of days helped, but of all the missing girl stories I’ve been reading lately, I loved this one most.
It’s taken way longer than necessary to get through the third season of this Netflix show but HOLY CROW I watched the finale last night and need to talk about it with someone. Best season yet.
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