Happy 10'th anniversary to my kidney, my dad and my second chance at life!

Wow 10 years already?? Where did time go? Oh yes it went to me living the fullest life I possibly could live!
I remember all of this as if it was yesterday. In 1999 I entered the hospital with Meningicoccal Meningitis, in septic shock and complete kidney failure. My kidneys had shut down so suddenly that Dr. Abby the emergency room surgeon told my family he had never seen a person survive kidney failure like this before. My kidney’s went from working as a normal 19 year olds should to stopping 100% without a warning. But that’s how Meningicoccal Meningitis is, it absolutly blindsides you. Your healthier then ever one day then the next every organ in your body has shut down, every blood vessel in your body is hemorrhaging and if you survive you are facing the amputation of your limbs, loss of hearing and skingrafts just to name a few.

As soon as the nurses were able to find a vein they put me on 24 hour dialysis where a nurse had to sit by my side around the clock manually controlling my blood pressure and heart rate. If my heart rate would drop, they would adjust a medication to raise it up then suddenly my blood pressure would crash and they would give me another med to bring that up, all while the machine was filtering my blood. My life was absolutely in the nurses hands at this point and any wrong decision or wrong move and I would have been gone. It was such tedious work for Nurse Vicki that at one point she stepped out of the room and broke down crying to my family.



After a few weeks, I was moved from 24 hour dialysis to Hemo Dialysis which was an experience all of it's own. Every other day I would watch them roll in the machine and absolutely dread what was about to happen for the next 4 hours. They would hook the tube from the machine to the tube that was placed into my heart. When they flipped the machine on and it would slowly start pulling my blood out and pass it through a network of tubes and filters. The filter was a long clear tube which had a material in it that had the appearence of a coffee filter. I always thought that was strange, that my life is being supported by a modified coffee filter. It’s almost shocking that this man made machine with an on/off switch and a plug in the wall could mimic a human kidney. After hooking me up to this artificial kidney I would watch the filter paper go from bright white , to pink, then get saturated with red. The filtered blood would then go through a network of tubing and would go directly back into my heart. My fascination with the machine would only last for a good 50 seconds before I would get dizzy, start shaking and throw up which would require the nurse to give me a medication that would knock me out. About two hours later I would open my eyes just to see that I still had another 2 hours attached to the machine. I have to say that as challenging as it was, I don’t have any negative feelings toward this time. If anything ,I only have good feelings. I imagine it is due to the fact that my family would sit buy my side the whole time chatting with the Dialysis Tech who always seemed to have interesting stories. There is something about that time that is so surreal for me to think back on, yet the feelings that I get from it are those of gratitude and comfort.



After about 5 months of dialysis, 4 hours a day, 3 days a week we decided that I wasn’t getting any healthier and if anything I was only getting weaker. I was only 83 pounds to start with and when I would get back from the dialysis center I would weigh less and be lacking important nutrients in my system. I spent these months without legs, in a wheelchair, with severe back pain and would sleep most of the day. At one point we realized that I wouldn’t be able to walk or gain weight as long as I had to be hooked to this machine. It literally was sucking out whatever life was left in me.

I was lucky enough to be switched to another type of dialysis called Peritoneal Dialysis. My new kidney Doctor switched me to this dialysis after seeing how sick I was getting. Peritoneal is a type of dialysis that is gentle enough to be used on infants yet efficient enough for an adult to survive long term. I had a surgery that pulled out the hemo-dialysis port from my heart and replaced it with a peritoneal tube that went into my abdomen. This dialysis would prove to be my life saver! Just days after using it, I already felt better and within weeks I was gaining weight and building enough strength to get around the house in my new prosthetic legs. Over the next few months I went on to work out daily, to go out with friends and to even go to Aspen, Colorado for the summer by myself and hike and rockclimb. All with my “friend” the peritoneal machine by my side.

A year and a half after my whole ordeal started I had hit a point where I realized, my kidneys were not coming back. We were hoping that being 19 years old, that I was young enough for my kidneys to regenerate. But we were aware from the beginning that kidneys aren’t very good at that. Once they are injured they tend to get worse until a transplant is eventually needed. My kidneys had functioned normal to a point, I was lucky enough to be able to eat as much as I wanted and to not have to worry about sodium or potassium, yet my kidneys would not filter enough toxins out of my blood on thier own to keep me alive and healthy. But the thought of a kidney transplant was so overwhelming to me it was so hard to wrap my head around the idea that for a long time it wasn't even a thought! I had just survived losing both of my legs and now the doctors expect me to have a kidney transplant?? Were they serious? Isn’t this the kind of stuff that happens to the people on Dateline, Oprah or 20/20? I pleaded at times with whatever greater force could hear me to please help my kidneys come back!! I cannot stress how I was absolutely against having a kidney transplant in every way!! That is.. until I felt the cool air of fall approaching and started to sense snow in the air.

October of 2000, a year and a half after I left the hospital I couldn't fight it any longer and agreed with my doctors that the only way for me to move forward with my life was to have a transplant. The decision was made, I had no choice, If I ever wanted to snowboard again and live a healthy life I would have to succumb to my worst fear. Here I was trying so hard to keep myself healthy so that I would never get something like Meningitis again. Yet ,with a kidney transplant I would be forced to take immune suppressive medication the rest of my life so I don’t fight off the kidney. It was a catch 22 and I had to figure out if living a life on dialysis without a new kidney and without immunosuppressive medication would keep me healthier then living a life with a new kidney paired with a life on immunosuppressive meds. I chose the latter.

We always assumed that If I was going to go through with the surgery that my sister would be the donor. We thought that our closeness in age and her optimum health would make her a perfect candidate. That is until we realized that under a microscope her and I didn’t match at all. The first thing that has to match is your blood type, so that ruled her and my mom out right away. The next thing that had to match was the antigens. There are 6 in total that they look at and the more antigens that match between the donor and the recipient the better chance that your body will accept the kidney. My father and I matched higher then most kids do with their parents, 4 out of 6. Yes, my dad was almost perfect match!



After multiple X rays and blood tests the doctors gave us the option to set the surgery for November 7th, which just so happened to be my 21st birthday. As much as I agreed that I was receiving the best birthday gift I could ever receive, I chose to do the surgery 1 week later on November 13th. So when most 21 year olds are taking shots of tequila, I was taking shots of morphine and immune suppressive medication.

I remember the day of surgery clearly. I remember waking up that cold November morning, looking in the mirror and thinking that I could not imagine really following through with this. I kept thinking that something was going to happen last minute where they weren’t going to have to do the transplant. That miraculously my blood work would suddenly come back perfect or that the doctor would call in sick. I truly could not believe that this was happening today.

When we arrived at the hospital they took my father in first. I can’t imagine how nerve wrecking it was for my mother to know that both her husband and daughter were going through major surgeries at the same time. She handled it all with grace. As soon as they took my father back, I put my headphones on and tried to stay as relaxed as I possibly could which didn’t last for long. I began to panic so the nurses knocked me out with some sort of medication. Next thing I remember was waking up the next morning in my hospital bed. The first thing I asked was “how is dad?” then I looked down to see the bandage across my stomach and that indeed the surgery happened. My dad and I had just had the first Laparoscopic kidney transplant in Nevada!



According to the doctors the surgery almost didn’t happen. Although my father and I were put through a series of tests and x-rays before the surgery, they came across something unexpected when they opened him up. They realized that he had 3 arteries leading to his kidneys when average person is supposed to only have 1. If this were a normal situation the doctors would have stopped in their tracks, stitched him up and would have stepped out to tell my mom the unfortunate news. But because it was the first laparoscopic surgery and doctors and medical students had come out from other states to watch and assist, they decided to cross their fingers and go ahead with the transplant. My dad’s surgery lasted 6 hours due to the caution they had to take when cutting all of the blood supply to the kidney. I believe my surgery took less time with zero problems except for the loss of blood that required a few days of blood transfusions.

3 months later my father was happy and I was healthy enough to get back up on a snowboard and win 3 bronze medals in the USASA National Snowboard Competition.


So here I am 10 years later,10 years after the first day of my new life and I have to say that I am extremely grateful and proud. Proud of myself for enduring everything I did, proud of my father for putting his life on the line to save mine. My goal was to never treat myself like a victim to my circumstances , to always find the things in my life to be grateful for and to live the absolutely fullest life that I possibly could live! This transplant was my second breath and chance at life and there was no way that I was going to let myself waste it!

It’s funny because as much as I pleaded and prayed to the Gods above to bring the function of my kidneys back , today I am grateful that they didn’t. Nothing has made me live to the fullest like this transplant has. To know that absolutely every day matters and that every day that you are healthy and that you have love around you, that you are blessed. That has been my everyday for the last 10 years.

These days, I live my life not focused on my kidney or on my legs but on the passions in my life! Because of this life saving gift, I not only have the opportunity to live a full life, but I have been given the opportunity to help others do the same. Although I don’t don't look back on this experience daily, it is this time of year that always reminds me of this nervous young girl who was clueless what the future would hold and clueless about the beauty and adventures that awaited her.





This day affects me emotionally deeper than anything else ever could,I am so grateful to my father that words cannot even begin to describe. I really do not know all that went through my father’s head at the time that he was preparing to give me one of his kidneys. He really never expressed the fear and concerns that no doubt he had to be feeling. He just proudly stepped forward and offered to put his life on the line in order to save the life of his daughter’s. I will never quite know how to thank him for this gift of life and all I can hope is that whatever my father has inside of him, whatever it was that gave him the courage to do what he did for me, that I too have it inside of me.


Happy 10th Anniversary Dad!