A Childhood Unlike Any Other

I grew up like most children. I didn’t have any crazy routines or anything different really besides take medication every day. It’s the year 1994. I grew up watching cartoons, playing Nintendo and playing with toys. I lived a seemingly normal life if anyone saw me and didn’t know I had a kidney transplant. As I grew from a toddler to a kid I was blessed in a way. I didn’t have as much swelling in my face from the medications and I didn’t have any other symptoms really. I was a pretty good poster child for how a successful transplant in a child would look.

Shortly after I turned 5 years old I started having a issue with my vision. I kept having double vision and other astigmatisms so I saw an eye doctor. Soon I’d be wearing glasses which was a new experience but I quickly adapted. My parents also started me in schooling. Because of my kidney transplant my parents wanted me to go somewhere with smaller class sizes to reduce the possibility of me getting sick. They also wanted me to be close by my grandparents in Austin in case I ever needed anything or something went wrong. I started going to Our Savior Lutheran School and I loved it. Prior to me being that age and going to Kindergarten I hadn’t played with other kids very much. So it was a huge and welcome change. I played and learned just like everyone else with no problems at all.

One day that summer would be a terrifying experience that none of us were ready for. My Dad and I were going to see my grandmother for my Dad’s birthday. On the way to Austin we got into a head on collision wreck. I can still remember the impact 25 years later. I can remember my stomach hurting incredibly bad and feeling sick. A man who was passing by put me and my dad on his tailgate. I can remember my dad being strong but worried as I heard the ambulance come. I kept losing consciousness but I then remembered being inside the ambulance and throwing up blood on myself. The next thing I knew or remembered was waking up in a recovery room with my parents both in the room just relieved I was okay. My dad had a broken wrist. I asked if everything was okay. Luckily I only had internal bleeding caused by the seat belt and it was that seat belt that saved me. Doctors were able to go back through the incision I had from my transplant and were able to stop the bleeding and make sure I’d be okay. I can remember so many people coming to visit me. It was seeing all those people that made me realize even at 5 years old that I meant a lot, to a lot of people. Soon I was released and things slowly went back to normal.

When I was about 7 years old my Nephrologist wanted to have me help present a stamp that was going to be put out that year by the USPS to promote organ donation! I thought that was one of the coolest things ever and my first public step into being an advocate for organ donation.

As the years went on I grew, but not by much. I lived a happy childhood though. I would ride with my mom or dad everyday on their way to work and they’d drop me off either at School or my grandmothers house. After I’d get out of school my grandma would pick me up and watch me till my mom or dad got off work. I went and had routine labs every 6 weeks to check my kidney. For the most part everything was fine. I spent the majority of these years living a pretty normal life besides the labs and neprologist visits. It was routine and for most of my childhood I had no worries outside of grades and being cool with my friends. By the time I was in 5th grade I left Our Savior Lutheran School and went to public school here in Elgin.

When I was about 10 years old I learned my first lesson about keeping myself from catching sicknesses. I got picked up from school not thinking it was anything serious. I then realized I was on my way to the Doctor to get some shots. See I’ve had a flu shot every year of my life and well, I’ve never once had the flu in my life. When you have a compromised immune system from things like a kidney transplant the simplest sicknesses can wreck havoc on your body. I was never aware of how important it was to ensure in never caught any of these sicknesses. So apparently another student in one of my classes had chickenpox. You know, the sickness most of us get as kids and it’s uncomfortable but gone within a week or so. Well for me that meant getting not 1 injection but 4 because of my weight. I had to get a shot in each arm and each leg. And this happened on more than one occasion while I was in school. So yeah, not fun but it was necessary. And I’d learn one day when I was 16 why those shots were necessary.