I remember the day so clearly. It was a hot and windy July day in Elk City and some guy was coming to interview for an opening on the newspaper staff. He walked in the front door still wearing his aviator sunglasses and his necktie had blown up over his right shoulder. I remember thinking to myself “please don’t hire this clown.”

He did get hired. And even though I had been given the advice to avoid office romances, the options in Elk City were quite limited. Office conversations turned into lunches at Pizza Hut and then dates to the movie theater in Sayre. About a year and a half later, on November 24, 1984, we were married. This year, we will celebrate our 34^th wedding anniversary.

We were kids. We were both 23 when we said our vows, not really knowing what was ahead. We’ve had great adventures and shared great sorrow. For better – we’ve watched our two children, Tyler and Sarah, grow into beautiful adults. For worse – the loss of many loved ones including our parents. Now it’s time to put another section of our vows to test – in sickness and in health.

Tim was first diagnosed in 2002 with Polycystic Kidney Disease. PKD is a genetic disease passed from his dad to him causing uncontrolled growth of cysts in the kidney eventually leading to kidney failure. He has been seeing a specialist since this time and has been in good health. Dr. Laura Rankin monitors a couple of numbers related to his kidney function. We’ve known for some time the numbers were slowly declining. Now the numbers have started declining more rapidly.

So our journey with Polycystic Kidney Disease continued Monday, March 12 with the Patient and Family Orientation for Kidney Transplant at the Integris Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute in Oklahoma City. This was the first step in the evaluation process of being listed for a kidney transplant.

We will spend the next six to eight weeks patiently waiting for the process of insurance approval. Then Tim will go through intensive medical evaluations and we will be meeting with lots of representatives from the Integris transplant team including the transplant surgeons, Dr. Scott Samara and Dr. Shea Samara, social workers, financial coordinators and pharmacists.

Kidneys can come from deceased donors or living donors. Living donors need to be the same blood type and in good health. I want to be a living donor for that “clown” who walked into the door of the Elk City Daily News in the summer of 1983. Tim and I are not the same blood type though, so we will be working toward what is known as a kidney paired donation. A paired exchange consists of two or more kidney donor/recipient pairs whose blood types are not compatible. The two recipients trade donors so that each recipient can receive a kidney with a compatible blood type.

We’ve been told paired donations usually take at least a year for everything to be evaluated and arranged. Tim’s health is good and his doctor has said she thought it would be 12 to 18 months before he starts to feel badly.

The surgery for Tim will mean a 4 to 5 day hospital stay and then a recovery process of up to six weeks that will include lots of follow-up appointments and monitoring at Integris. For a living donor, the surgery is done laproscopically and is only a 2-day hospital stay.

The success rate with transplants at Integris is 98 percent, two percentage points above the national average. And the failures are mostly because the patient isn’t taking his medicine or taking care of other health factors like managing weight, keeping active and maintaining communication and contact with his doctors. Tim will be taking medication for the life of his new organ to make sure his body doesn’t reject it. And I’ll be making sure he does all the other things for a successful transplant and long life with me!

If you want to know more about this process, there is a 55-minute video from the father and son team of surgeons who direct this world-class organ transplant program included within this presentation link https://www.integris.tv/transplant/video/kidney-orientation/list/transplant-patient-orientation.

We will certainly keep you posted along the way and let you know when we hit major milestones in this process. In the meantime, your prayers are welcome and when the time comes, I expect mall you good cooks to fatten us up.

I wasn’t sure about sharing this information but three friends encouraged me to  journal during the process and what better way to do that than with my blog. Thanks for joining us on this journey and being part of our support system.