It is a Tuesday night and we are waiting for someone to die. This is the fifth time that I have waited anxiously for a phone call from the hospital to tell me that this stranger has died, and if the hospital is offering their kidney to my partner. On this particular night this patient on life support is a young man who overdosed. He did not use drugs intravenously, is under thirty and his kidney is in the top ten percentile as a match to my partner’s.
This organ is incredibly special to us. We have been on dialysis for five years. My partner hates it when I use “we” language about his illness, but as his caretaker, his illness has become an integral part of my life. I have watched the progression of his illness, the weight he has lost, the swelling of his ankles, the greyness of his complexion. There are the limitations of his body, his diet - the nightly dialysis treatment while we sleep. Beyond his physical symptoms lies the depression and anger that he does not name.
Two weeks previously we made the fatal mistake of hope. We were offered an organ and after the journey to the hospital, notifying our jobs and families my partner was given the pre-operation steroids and the anesthesiologist rolled him away. As his feet entered the operating room, he was informed that the organ was being held for further testing. Hours later we were sent home to call our loved ones and explain that we would have to wait a little longer.
Now, two weeks later, I am waiting for this unknown man to die, in the hopes that we will return to the hospital for the last time. As I wait, I think about this young man’s life. I wonder if part of our wait is because the hospital is trying to find his next of kin to approve pulling him off life support. I wonder when his family saw him last, if he was alone when he overdosed; if he is alone now. I wonder how long he struggled with addiction - if he had been through rehab - how old he was when he began using and if he knows what an incredible gift he can give us.
I think about the family of this young man as well. I think about the weight of the question his next of kin will be asked, “Can we remove this person from life support?”.
The question will be turned over again and again…
Do they pull this young man off life support so that he can pass as peacefully as possible?
Do they keep him on life support in the hopes that he can be saved?
When was the last time they saw this loved person? To touch them, to tell them they are loved, that they have a place in the world?
What I want to tell this young man and his family is that the gift of his organ will not go unloved and unappreciated. This man and his organ will become a part of our family, his body will become a part of my partner’s body, allowing my partner to continue living. In turn, his family’s pain will become part of our family. Their grief will resonate through my partner’s body as he heals from surgery. The death that they mourn, that they may even have anticipated, will be transmogrified into life. By giving us this piece of themselves, they have become part of our lives.
This organ will give my partner and I the gift of life. With this organ we can travel again, unweighted by the burden of medical equipment or the logistics of having dialysis supplies delivered to our destination. We can camp together some night, we can have the gift of falling asleep in a strange place - unbothered by the ritual of preparing his dialysis machine and slashing the bags of used fluids in the morning. We can rid our cupboard of my partner’s nutritional supplements and special renal failure friendly foods. We can clear the house of roughly one hundred boxes of dialysis fluid, drain sets and medical supplies.
Together we wait with this young man’s family, holding vigil over his life and death. I wonder if they have pulled this young man from life support, if his brain has died, if his organs have shut down. When his nurse knows if he has died, the hospital will call us to tell us if his organs will be viable for transplant. We will know if his death has brought us the gift of life, or if his brain lingered for a few moments too long, rendering the organs unusable, and our hope deferred.
Cover Photo: The Waiting Room Project