You know how in old-fashioned letters or books somebody would start out by saying, “I write this with heavy heart”? Well, I guess that is exactly how I feel right now, along with a great deal of anger. I got a call late yesterday afternoon from the care coordinator at the UCSF Kidney Transplant Center, telling me that they have decided to not accept me as a donor for my dear friend.

They found three things in my testing that they say rule me out, and to me, these are things that can be solved, and therefore would not be life-threatening to me. These are not major issues!
1. They found that I have an elevated cholesterol level, (230) which can be controlled.
2. They took only two blood pressure readings that day. One in the morning showed 120/68, and the one in the afternoon (immediately after I was weighed and so upset about my weight) was 130/80. I don’t think that this is a life-threatening reading! It seems that this pre-hypertensive reading can easily be controlled with weight loss or meds... Plus, my BP was so totally within the norm on my stress treadmill test, even when it was set at a 16% grade level... That is really, really steep, too!
3. My blood chemistry testing indicated a uric acid level of 6.9. The care coordinator told me that a high normal reading was 6.8. It sure doesn’t seem like I was that far out of the norm on this test.

So I am angry, and pretty devastated, to be ruled out for these reasons, without any choice on my part. I asked if this was negotiable in any way, and she said no. The team has made a decision.

Well, this decision means life or death for my friend, and it seems like I should have a vote here. I am certainly a healthy and active person, and I am quite willing to take whatever meds necessary after I donate my kidney, if I need to. I am willing to do that to give life to my friend. It seems a small price to pay on my part...

How does it feel to be rejected as a donor? It feels like shit... I feel like my body has betrayed both me and my friend, and that I have let down my friend and his family. I gave them joyous hope with my offer to donate, and with each test that I passed, the hope grew... My friend’s family celebrated on Christmas, with, at last, hopes for many more holidays together. Then, on a crisp, sunny Friday afternoon, with one short phone call, the earth opened up and swallowed that hope for life for my friend.

I am now the second donor that has been rejected by UCSF. When I called my friend yesterday, he told me that he now does not have any hope that any future donor would make it through the testing process. He said he doesn’t know if he can take another donor loss....

Hope is a terrible thing to lose...

It seems so unfair that the expectation for a donor is that they have to be a perfect physical specimen - no wonder that the record for UCSF is that they reject two-thirds of the potential donors. I could understand not being accepted if they found I have some major physical problems, but the reasons that they are telling me simply do not fall into that category.

I am going to call the care coordinator on Monday and talk to her again. I was just so stunned when she called me that I wasn’t able to think straight. I am going to ask if I can be re-evaluated in three to six months... I can lose weight and work out even harder to get in better shape and maybe could still donate... But you know what, I don’t really have any hope that they will say yes....