Picking up from last time –
I put “the aftermath” in quotes in the title because this whole thing really isn’t over yet. Is the eye of a storm the aftermath of it? But, this is the aftermath to kind of the first chunk of it all.
There were some various things that were hard for me to deal with after the first rejection.
I continued getting emails from MatchingDonors.org. I tried unsubscribing yet it proved unsuccessful. (You know those lists you get on and you feel like you’re never gonna get off of? :-P)
I was even called once to ask if I’d get tested to see if I were a match for someone. On the phone, I said, “Thank you for your call, but I’m really no longer interested in going through MatchingDonors. Can you please take me off the list?”
I haven’t gotten any more phone calls, but the emails still come sometimes. At this point, I’m not even worrying about how to more successfully unsubscribe, because I almost like getting them to remind me of my anger. I don’t (at all) want to be an angry person. But I do want to be a driven person fighting for what I believe is right. And my fight to give a kidney will not end until I have donated one.
I don’t really need reminders of how important this is to me. It lives with me every day. But I don’t mind getting those emails – just to give me a little extra push.
So anyway, these emails! Oh the emails.
They pick out a specific O positive person who’s looking for a kidney, talk about them a little and ask me to get tested since I could be a match. And the people in different emails are from all over the country. The emails state the all of my travel and everything would be paid for.
Sometimes I just want to break down and say, “it seems as though things would be so much easier through this site!” I don’t know if they would be or not, but my perception is that hospitals are partnering with MatchingDonors, and the hospitals perhaps actually want to help. And maybe if I had this company (MatchingDonors) fighting for me, my journey would be easier? I have no idea!
But there’s definitely a part of me that says, “this seems simpler, cheaper, and easier.” But there’s a bigger, louder part of me that says, “You cannot just decide whose life is worth more than another’s. You just do not want to do that. You have to go the blind route so it’s given to whoever has the highest need.”
(Plus perception is so often wrong. From the outside looking in, it seems like things have to be easier with this big company which seems to have ties to tons of hospitals, but maybe it’s just as hard. Heck, it could be harder! I don’t know.
I do know there were a couple of other rough things to deal with. And I’ll get to those next time.