You had joy, you had fun, I had painkillers on call

How did this year go by so fast? I didn't do anything, didn't see anybody, haven't accomplished even one little thing. It's no big deal, but so much time has passed. I can't think of a year before in my adult life in which so very little has happened.

I mean, I know where it went: day slid into day into weeks and months as I lay in a hospital bed. That adds up to most of a year when you consider that at this time last year I was relatively healthy and going back to work, prepared for the long wait for a transplant.

I suppose I am still waiting, sort of.

I know that I am nowhere near ready to return to work right now, but if I give myself a couple of months, I might have a shot.

I also know that at some point, just about everybody around me was doubting that I'd live. It seems that I am the only to whom the distinct possibility of my own death never occured. Sometimes now I wonder if I had ever prepared myself to die, if I had ever said to myself that I was tired of hurting, tired of being in this bed, tired of never getting better, what would have happened? I was rarely in a situation where monitors would have alerted the nursing staff if I had simply slipped away in the night. Yes, that probably could have happened.

Wasn't my time, I suppose. I think you're supposed to know. Maybe it's the same way you're supposed to know you're in love. Not the same, I guess, but similar.

So, now I try to cope, and I wonder what normal life is like. What is normal life like? Do any of you know? I think of normal life as being something where you go to work every day, and you have the strength to keep your house in order and your files slightly up-to-date. You are able to make plans a few weeks down the road. You don't worry about passing out every time you get behind the wheel of a car. You don't sleep as much as your cats.

I mean, I didn't really expect to come out of this ordeal with 2.5 kids, a husband and an SUV.

I really do wish that I'd been able to keep the kidney, but I know I'm better off now that it's gone. Dr. Alijani came to talk to me after the surgery to remove the thing was over, and he said he'd seen people who struggled the way I had, and they did very well the second time around; Dr. Jonsson had the same kind of stories.

I hope they're right. I hope I can convince somebody to give me a kidney so I don't have to wait again; and so I can have the advantages of a living donor. If you know any healthy good samaritans out there who think their lives would be infinitely better having done a really good deed... well, right. Like that's going to happen. Is there anybody out there like that any more?

But if a kidney donor suddenly drops into your lap, you probably know where to send him or her.

before - after