Meet The Family

4/11/11

Last night Shane and I went to dinner with Cherina, her dad Steve, and boyfriend Cody. We met at Silver City at 5:30, were seated shortly thereafter and left at 8. We sat and talked about everything for 2 and a half hours, and the time just flew by. Her mom was unable to make it and we hope to get together some time again with her, too. After we got in the car, Shane turned to me and said, “good job.” And that was it.

At least three times Steve told me that Cherina and I could be first cousins, we looked so much alike to him. He also thought that we had a lot in common. He is a sweet man, a hard worker who would do anything for his daughter. A few times you could see him lost in thought. I can only assume that he was thinking about Cherina and how he would do anything to help her, or thinking about how his baby’s nightmare might be close to an end, or perhaps thinking about how lucky he was to have a daughter with such strength, faith and composure. It is obvious to me that Cherina gets a lot of her wonderful personality from her dad. I found myself wanting to hug him multiple times last night – I guess this is not odd though, I often find myself wanting to hug people!

It was great to see Cody again, too. Cody’s older sister and I went to junior high and high school together, and did hang out a little. Cody is the same age as my little brother and they were friends in school, too. Cody reminded me that the last time we saw each other was my senior year – his freshman year – at CWU at the second and final house-party my roommates and I went to. Somehow we got trapped in a staircase with a ton of people in this sweaty, dark house, too many people in both directions and nowhere to go. House parties seem like a lifetime ago, carefree college days are long gone for both of us now.

             Watching Cody and Cherina was fun, they are obviously in love and treat each other so well. There were multiple sideways glances and smiles so big they must be coming from the heart. Cody’s dad has spent 2 years on the UNOS liver transplant list, and has had a few close calls, but so far nothing has panned out for him. I can’t imagine having one loved one on the national transplant list, let alone two. I might want to run and hide, live my life in denial or eat a LOT of chocolate ice cream if I were in his situation. At one point last night he said that he knows way too much about transplants right now. Isn’t that the truth!

Cherina told me last night that she is all set to start peritoneal dialysis any day now. The doctors have left it up to her. She was explaining that in a healthy human their creatinine levels are .8, dialysis starts around 5 and she is currently at 6. Anything above a 2.5 is too toxic to carry a pregnancy to term, so most people on dialysis will never be able to get pregnant since dialysis doesn’t usually lower the creatinine that much. She will be able to have more flexibility and actually be at home for her dialysis treatments, which will allow her to continue to work and travel. Last night she was saying the doctors advised her to not wait too long, as some of the side effects can become pretty unbearable if she does, but she’s not sure if she is there yet. I brought up the fact that she might not have to be on it that long IF our crossmatch comes back negative, and we should know really soon. Cherina has been kept completely in the dark about the donor side of the transplant, and it is my understanding that even her nephrologist doesn’t know when there is a potential for her transplant to take place. Since multiple donors have expressed willingness to donate to Cherina, she has been under the impression that they would go through each potential donor, work them up one at a time doing all of the testing and once that is done they will choose from the best candidate. In reality, if we have a negative crossmatch, we could have surgery in a month and a half, maybe sooner if we were really on the ball about things. She was shocked and had no idea. I have been texting her all last week, saying “day 10 of 10-14”, “day 12”, etc. and she didn’t realize why I was so anxious to hear the answer.

After meeting her family and seeing her once again I am so confident in what is about to happen. I can’t explain it, but I do know there are very few things that I have felt so strongly about in my life. My purpose is to heal her. This is my calling …

 ~Kara