First of all, thank you for the opportunity to come and share with all of you today. Denny and Jody have shared with me that many of you have been praying for us and for the donor throughout this whole process, and I know it’s great for me to be able to faces to those prayers.
Denny asked me to share about my journey these last few years…and as I thought back over it, it seems like it was a while ago…but in reality, it all began just 2 years ago this month. Looking back, it’s pretty neat to see God’s fingerprints all over it…it’s just too bad I didn’t see them in the midst of it…
I had been feeling poorly for just about a month at the end of June of 2009. It started with a pretty rapid weight gain, even though I was going to the gym 5 days a week. I cut down my food intake, worked out harder, and nothing seemed to stop the scale from climbing up. A few weeks later, I noticed that I wasn’t able to keep the pace on the treadmill and elliptical that I had worked up to…and a week after that, I was getting winded just climbing up a flight of stairs to tuck my kids into bed. On top of that, I was dealing with a splitting headache that was so severe, it would make me physically sick. Finally, I googled my symptoms…and let me tell you, that was a scary thing to do…I got everything from mad cow disease to heart failure. That was enough to finally get me to go see a doctor, so I made an appointment for the next day.
At my appointment, I gave him the lab results from some blood work I had done the previous January, and he looked that over while running some other tests. After the tests were processed, he came in with the news: I was in end stage kidney failure. My blood pressure was 220/120, which had him fearing a stroke, and the reason for the bad headaches. The anemia was caused by the inability of my kidneys to clean my blood, leaving it oxygen starved and unable to do it’s job well. And the weight gain was due to excess water in my system, something healthy kidneys eliminate automatically. He set up an appointment for me for the next day with a specialist, and sent me back home. I was overwhelmed….I thought it was a virus or something like it…but end stage kidney failure?! My first thought is I’m way too young for this…and then started thinking about all the bad things that happens with this diagnosis. But God showed His first sign of showing up that next morning. In my bible reading for that day was a verse from Isaiah 50 that I needed to hear:
Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on his God.
That was my first sign from God that things were going to be OK….and I believed that for a few days as I hoped that some medicine and rest would take care of whatever I had…but oh, how quickly I forgot that. After many more tests, a biopsy of my kidney finally revealed what I had: a condition called IgA nephropathy. This is a fairly rare condition, affecting only about 4000 people each year. What it is is an unidentified (at this time) antigen gets into your body and your bloodstream. Your white blood cells attack it like any other foreign body, but instead of defeating it, digesting it, and getting rid of it, it melds with the white blood cells to make a paste like substance. This travels through your blood to the tiny little filters in your kidneys and plugs them shut, choking off the blood supply to the kidneys and rendering that filter useless. My biopsy showed that over 80% of my kidneys were irreversibly damaged, and my kidneys will never recover. They admitted me to the hospital, gave me 2 pints of blood, and inserted a catheter in my neck to begin dialysis treatments.
So, I’m on dialysis at 39. I did my best to keep a good attitude, but knowing you have to rely on a machine to live makes you feel much less invincible than you did before. I did a pretty good job of putting on a brave face and making others think I had it all together, but I didn’t. In particular, I remember the day of my biopsy. I had it done in the morning, and was still pretty sore that evening, while feeling sorry for myself. My wife came down from our bedroom around 10 p.m. and informed me she had a kidney stone, and we needed to go to the hospital. Once there, they got her sedated and resting, and I stepped outside for some air. As I did, it began to rain. I looked up at the sky, and just said this: “REALLY?!?!?! My kidneys don’t work at all, my wife’s here in the hospital, and you decide to make it rain this minute?! You said you’d never give me more than I can bear…well, God, the cup is full. You need to stop. I can’t take on any more than this.”
(A friend of mine told me much later that it’s true that God doesn’t give us more than we can bear….He just gives us bigger cups instead.) As I stood there in the rain, though, the words of a song I had heard in worship a few weeks before that came back to my mind:
“Hide me now
Under Your wings
Cover me
Within Your mighty hand
Find rest my soul
In Christ alone
Know His power
In quietness and trust
When the oceans rise
And the thunders roar
I Will soar with You
Above the storm
Father You are King
Over the flood
And I will be still
And know You are God”
I so needed that in that moment…to just be reminded that He is God…and that I am not. Though it still seemed like more than I could bear…it was comforting to know that I wasn’t alone…and, sometimes, the only thing we can hold on to is the fact that God says that He will give us the strength to deal with whatever comes our way. Sometimes, we'll charge headstrong into those battles...but sometimes we've just got to let Him carry us through.
More tomorrow...
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