Three years ago, my [36F] mom [69F] was diagnosed with kidney failure, most likely due to high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes which was poorly controlled for years because she doesn’t like doctors and didn’t want to be a “pill-popper.”
She was told she had to go on dialysis three days a week while she was put on the kidney transplant waiting list, which takes years to find a match on average.
She was firm that she did not want to be on dialysis, and told me to give her one of my kidneys. She said she had raised me and provided for me all these years, put me through school etc., now she needed this from me.
Filial piety is very important to our culture (we are Chinese). I was taken aback by this, but after thinking about it, I also thought it was the right thing to do based on my own values.
I love my mom, I care about helping people, I was already signed up to be a deceased organ donor, plenty of people live with only one kidney so if I can give a kidney to save someone else’s life then I should, especially if it is a loved one, etc.
They make being a kidney donor sound very good in theory–people with only one kidney can live just as long as people with two, and if you ever need a kidney you get priority on the transplant list.
What they leave out is you have to basically turn your life upside down after because you now only have half the reserve.
I had been completely healthy before but only a year after the surgery they found that my remaining kidney couldn’t handle doing the work of two and was now also in the early stages of failing.
I had built my life around food, I was working my dream job as a chef and ran a food-travel blog as my main hobby. However to protect my remaining kidney I basically had to cut out meat, fat and sugar from my diet, and limit salt to just 1 gram a day which meant I had to quit my dream job as a huge part of it was tasting the food I was serving.
I don’t have any other skills so the only job I was able to get was as a secretary. Almost all of the food I can still eat is very bland and when I do travel I often have to bring my own food or survive on salads.
Meanwhile, only about two years after transplant, the kidney I gave to my mom also failed. She would often not be taking the immunosuppressants for after the transplant because she could not tolerate the side effects.
it’s possible her hypertension or diabetes were still not optimally controlled, and she also did not make any of the dietary changes. She is now back on dialysis and the waiting list.
I’ll probably get flak for this but looking back I cannot help but think it was not worth it. I bought my mom maybe two extra years at the cost of thirty years of my life or more that would have been free from worries about chronic health problems.
I also lost my career, my main hobby, and my husband and I had been thinking about starting a family but my doctor told me it would not be advisable for me to have children.
I was previously healthy but am now on several medications to try to stretch my remaining kidney as far as possible before I have to go on dialysis. And even if I do get a kidney transplant, I will have to take strong immunosuppressants with significant side effects for the rest of my life.
My mom lived a full life, almost 70 years, and to try to buy her a few more years I feel like I cut mine in half