Catching you up and asking for prayers
This past Monday, as some of you might know, I went back to Maryland for a follow up on my stent infection. The day was packed full of appointments and everything went well! We should know the final results by the end of this week, although I just got an email from one of my doctors who said so far everything looks clear! Very exciting!
But there is a huge concern with my mom that I would really appreciate your prayers for. About a week and a half ago, through some unrelated, routine tests, we found out that my mom needs a kidney transplant. Shocking, I know. There is a kidney disease that runs on my mom's side of the family, called Polycystic Kidney DIsease or PKD. My great grandmother, my great aunt and my cousin had it and now my grandmother, my mom, a cousin and me all have it. PKD is where cysts take over your kidneys and kills the tissue where they form, eventually killing the kidney. There is no treatment or cure. We have always known that for any of us kidney problems could be in our future but it's one of those things where you could die of old age without it ever affecting you or you could need a transplant at 50! You just never know!
Right now mom's doctor wants her to get on the kidney transplant list. They said it could take years before they find a match. One thing that we are hopeful for is a match within our family. Thankfully each of us has a sibling that doesn't have polycystic kidneys. Mamaw has Cheryl, Mom has Leslie and I have Alex. Usually your sibling is the closest match within the family but then sometimes that doesn't work out so easily and you have to go outside of the family. Hopefully soon we can start the process of letting those 3 get tested to see if any of them are matches for either Mom or Mamaw. Right now Mom's kidneys are only functioning at 17% which yes does seem low but they are still functioning! And she's hopeful that she will be able to skip over the dialysis process and go straight to the transplant. After meeting with a specialist at the NIH and talking to her about everything she really calmed our nerves. It seems like transplant has a high success rate with PKD patients. We know it's not going to be a quick and easy thing, believe me we have been around hospitals long enough to know that's not how things work, but this does seem like the best option. Another positive thing we learned is that with Polycystic kidneys once they are removed and the new healthy kidney is in, you don't have to worry about the disease coming back, once the disease is out, it's always out! That's a huge blessing!
While we were there they checked my kidney function and everything checked out great! So now it's just time to get Mom healthy!
We are very optimistic about this whole process! Mom is handling everything great. She of course has concerns - but she feels very strongly that the Good Lord will bring her through this season too! But we would love and appreciate your prayers! Prayers to keep Mom's kidney function stable until they find her a kidney, for my grandmother's function to remain stable so that she doesn't have to go on the transplant list as well (we don't need to be double duty), to find a donor match for mom and for her to find the right doctor to use during this time. The one thing I thank God for - is that we know Him and we can lean on Him through it all. Luckily with all of my craziness we understand this may be more to handle than most. But we know He has a plan for us and that He has His hands all over every situation that we are faced with. With Him, we can get through anything! He is the one that gives us strength!