Picking up from last time –
Another thing the psychiatrist told me is that if I were giving to a family member, she’d approve me with no problems. But, I wasn’t. I was giving to a stranger.
I forget exactly how she phrased it, but she basically said, ‘Why do you care about this person. It’s not your dad, or your sister, or anyone you know.’
In disbelief, I came back with, “But it’s someone’s! It may not be my dad. But it’s someone’s dad. And if it were my dad and I didn’t match him, I’d be hoping against hope that some stranger would step up.”
Plus, as I’ve mentioned on this blog, I don’t care at all if the person has a family. Again, I care in a human caring about other human sense. But they don’t need to have a big or tight-knit family to mean something in this world to me. Even if they have no one, they are a human being! They deserve a chance to really live.
Then, she asks, “If you’re denied, will you be upset about it?”
(I could tell she was partly asking this because I was so gonna get denied so hard.)
I was still kind of, sort of-ish, trying to play the game of being a calm normal person who wasn’t totally being goaded and driven crazy by this woman. So, I answered I think pretty calmly, ‘Of course I’ll be upset. I really want to do this for someone. I’ve put a lot of time and energy into it, and it would be sad if someone didn’t get my kidney. It would be especially sad if I were denied not because of any medical reason, but because I didn’t say something correctly, or because someone didn’t like me.’
She jumped on this immediately, stating that they’re not there to decide whether they like me. They’re just there to decide if I’m capable of making decisions and successfully going through surgery and recovery. (We’ll touch on this again later.)
Then she asked, “Why would you be upset when whoever’s getting your kidney doesn’t even know you’re being tested for them? So, they can’t be disappointed…”
I’m sure my eyes probably grew 3x their normal size at this question because are you kidding me? It’s something I want to do. It’s something I’ve had to put a lot of work into. I answered with, “I’ll know!”
So, now we’ve been through the whole psychologist interview. Next time I’ll talk a bit about how I admit my perception and reality might be slightly off (but not by much!).