Reid Update

Reid is 22 months! YIKES. I can't believe how fast time flies. His vocabulary is exploding, he is throwing fits- can you say "Hello Terrible Twos!", and he is in a big boy bed- which he loves. I have never seen him so excited to go "night night". I am having difficulty uploading pics, i'll post some later - hopefully. It is 10:00pm and way past my bedtime, so "Night Night!" :)

Not a match

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the possibility of donating a kidney to my mom. I found out last week that I am not a match. I was kind of relieved, but also sad at the same time. I knew that if I was a match I would donate a kidney for her...I thought about the what if's and the maybe's but what really matters is the here and now. And right now I need my mom and Reid need's his grammie. Before I left the doctors appointment to head back to Raymond, my mom hugged me tight and said "I am glad you are not a match." In that single thought I felt the deepest love and connection with my mom- it was pure unconditional love. Here is my mom, blind, on dialysis spending 4+ hours evey Monday Wednesday and Friday hooked up to a machine, telling me she was happy that I was not a match because she didn't want me to go through everything. (I think deep down she was happy because she didn't want a kidney donation on my part to affect my chances of having another baby)- I am sure she felt obligated to say that, what else do you say when one of the two best candidates is not a match. But when I looked in her eyes I knew she was telling me the truth.
Right now, she is not dying from Kidney failure. She is doing very well on dialysis. There is no way to tell how long dialysis will work for her. She is being cleared medically for a transplant and will be put on the national transplant list soon (I hope). It can take more than 2 years to get a transplant, but even then, it seems like the stars have to be aligned just right (even if you are at the top of the list).
I keep thinking to myself, LIFE IS NOT FAIR- I want my mom healthy and happy, and I want her to be around for a LONG LONG LONG TIME. But if my mom taught me one thing, it was that life is not fair, we deal with life as it comes and we have to move forward. She has been through so much in her life- even before going blind and starting dialysis. She has experienced so much "unfairness" but still has the ability to smile - most of the time- and that is what I am trying to do. I smile a lot and cry a little. Sometimes my mom and I will cry together! :)

PS: My brother Andrew is going to be tested to see if he is a match. The doctor said the paired donation (where someone would donate a kidney to someone else and that person had someone willing to donate to my mom because they were a match) is very difficult to coordinate because it can be difficult to find a match, but it is still in my mind as an option and if all else fails and my mom does not find a match, I am going to look into the idea of paired donation.