A Special Sunday ! 💚

Hello my loves, I am very pleased to write you this post in particular!

Iknow what you may think; « But, Kristina !! You just posted an off-topic sunday last week to talk to us .. what is that for ? »

Why yes, indeed, I did. But today, as you can see with my picture, is a very special day for me, my friends and my family. In fact, two (2) very special and happy event is happening on this day. So allow me to put a bracket on my usual book blogging to present you my story, and explain what and why today is so important in my life.

Let’s start by explaning what’s in the featured picture; That is my very first tattoo that I got done while I was still in first year of college in 2012/early 2013. To give you a long story short, it is the internationnal symbol of organ donation; a green ribbon. Now, the date wasn’t added until almost a year after it happened (so.. in 2016, I’ve put more color in aswell while I was there). If you payed close attention to it, you would have noticed we are pinpoint the date I have inked on my skin. But what does that means ??

For me, it all started in my senior year of high school, 2011/early 2012. Sure it truly begin before that… but it was beyond our knowledge, you see. While I was attacking my last (& hardest) year of secondary education, my world started to crumble around me.

That’s when my innocence probably left, and had to face the fact that my very own mother was very ill; but something that cannot simply be cured as easily as a cold, or maybe a flu. This was something that could tear our family apart.. as the only way for this to really “go away”, and for us to be freed of all that, would be for another individual to give one of their kidney to my mom. Indeed, her kidney’s capacity of cleaning and filtring her blood of our body’s wastes that should end up in our bladder and leave our body, wasn’t working properly anymore; it was slowly decreasing in capacities, which was poisoning her in the long run, keeping all thoses waste in her blood rather than driving them out.

What can one do in this situation ? 

There’s only one thing at this point, while waiting for an organ donation to occur, Dialysis. A momentary solution which is consisting of either :

A) putting a bag of saline solution inside the membrane between your belly skin & organes’ “pouch”, emptying that solution to put new one inside. allowing it to « clean » the waste and taking that out of the body at the same time as the saline water. The Saline pouch is heated at body temperature before insering and this needs to be done 3 or 4 times a day, needing ~30mins each time.

B) Same proccess as in A, but instead of doing it in the daytime, is plugged onto a machine while sleeping and it does it for you. If something were to go wrong and the machine cannot filter the water for some reason, it will beep so you can wake up and check what’s wrong and fix it. However, this machine must be close to a toilet, as it have a tube for it to drain the water from one’s belly directly to the toilet. Also, the machine will beep for things as “silly” as you rolling on your belly, which is blocking the tube.

C) This is considered last resort, when all else fails. you’ll need to go to the hospital three (3) days a week or more depending of the case, for seances of 4hours a day. You would then be hooked onto a machine, either by a tube in your neck or wrist, and all your blood will cycle from your body to the machine to filter it and when it’s completed, from the machine to your body again.

All this to explain all that we had to face as a family and supporters for my mom. We saw her go through ~11 surgeries, in which they placed a catheter into her body (belly, chest & wrist) to be able to do her dialysis. About 8 of them wouldn’t had been necessary if her body wasn’t constantly needing the cathether to be moved as she had developped infections and her body rejecting them. One of them was also caused by a membrane in her belly to burst, which trapped the saline solution in her belly and it wasn’t going out as it should had.

When someone you love is going through all of that, you have constant fear of them leaving you behind; specially when surgery is happening. As of which, almost happened as my mom’s pulse were not going up. Thanksfully, her dad was watching over her and it ended up being only a big scare.

On my last year of college in 2014, I went and passed the tests needed to see if I could give her one of my kidneys. Alas, few weeks later, I got notified that sadly I couldn’t as her blood reacted with mine, leaving it too big of a chance of my kidney to be rejected … Due to her antibodies being too high with all thoses infections and all that, she was placed onto the international transplant list.

Just when we thought we would never get that call, on April 22th 2015 at 8am precisely, our miracle happened and we got THAT call. Neither one of us could belive it and off to Halifax she went (~3 hours from where we are. Only place to do organ donation around here) and her new kidney was transplanted at 8pm that day. Doctors were shook of how effective this transplant was; in fact, they said it was just like they took one of hers out and put it back in. It kicked right away, unlike when people usually need a month or two of dialysis still, and after barely 2weeks she was home again.

Me and my godmother were so not expecting to see a picture from my dad the day after the proceedure, with her sat in her hospital bed with a Tim’s coffee in hand !! 

Today marks three (3) years since she got the kidney that will had saved her life, and allow us to have more time together than one would even have dared wish for, at that point .. A celebration with a double ended knife, as we must not forget that each year another family is mourning the loss of one of theirs. We will forever be grateful of them going through this selfless decision of allowing the person they once loved to help families like mine, and saving us the same pain they went through way too early. We will never know the indentity of that hero that saved my mother, but all I can say is Thank you. Thank you from the very bottom of my heart ❤

On top of that, a year after mom has gotten the gift of life, my friend gave birth to her little boy. A little boy which is very loved from both of us and my weeins. This day end up being emotionnal for me, as we do attend his birthday party (he’s celebrating his 2years old now !) and I always get a side thought of how it would probably not had been possible for her to be assisting if she were to not have gotten her kidney … and I know how she loves that baby just as he were family.

* I’m very sorry that this post has been so long .. Thank you for having reached the bottom of what I had to say. I not only wanted to give the quick points, but I also wanted to explain the this and that of it all so you could understand better; and raise awareness as I was there aswell.  *