I am, without a doubt, the kind of person who turns up the radio in my car to drown out any noise it may be making. This same level of ‘if I can’t hear it or see it,’ often applies to my physical health as well. However, when you decide to volunteer to become a potential transplant donor, be prepared to undergo medical tests you had no idea would be relevant nor would you ever anticipate being required to have. Every knock, ping, or bang in your body will be discovered, examined, and scrutinized. I had figured, meh, they’ll need to know we have compatible blood types and general health information to meet the requirements for donation such as BMI–in my second phone interview, the donor coordinator questioned the weight I had entered on the initial application–”considering, you know, your age and well, Covid eating.” Excuse me, just WHAT are you implying? I never anticipated the sheer volume of tests and blood work I would be required to have. While learning so much about my overall health was intensely informative, it took TMI (too much information) to an entirely new meaning. 

It was late December, 2020 when I began the two-day battery of tests to determine my state of health to either qualify or disqualify me as a candidate for liver donation. Keep in mind, these tests did NOT include an annual Pap Smear, a colonoscopy, and a mammogram. These had to be completed, showing no signs of illness or irregularity, BEFORE the ones I would appear in the actual transplant center to receive. On the first day, in no particular order, I went back and forth between hospital departments to have blood work where approximately 28 vials were collected to find for about 100 different pieces of information, an MRI, a CT scan, an electrocardiogram, a chest x ray, urine cultures, meetings with psychologists and a social worker, and a general health workup–height, weight (oh, yeah, I got to prove I hadn’t lied, thank you very much), blood pressure, etc. Yes, all of this took the better part of an entire day–thank goodness I was on winter break from school at the time. On the second day, I was given a stress test  (why do women have to walk/run without a bra?? So disconcerting! I’m begging someone in the medical field to develop sensors that can go through the fabric of a sports bra for goodness sake!) and then more scans. 

If you have a health insurance app as I do, when test results are posted, you are signaled with an email. I will tell you, January 6 was a very busy phone day for me as continuous pings sent me scrambling to open the app. The blood work tests listed ranged from giggle-worthy to highly interesting. For example, I learned I don’t have syphilis. Yes, I’ll admit, I laughed at this one, but maybe not for the reason you are thinking. Syphilis is a horrific disease which, if left undetected, the side effects can range from awful to horrendous and can be lethal. Yes, it’s a sexually transmitted disease, so if I were a 13 year-old, there might be giggling. However, the reason it struck me as funny had to do with the 11th grade curriculum I had taught for years as a high school English teacher. Three of the texts I had taught possessed characters who were plagued by syphilis. I had students do presentations on its different stages, and we’d had crazy discussions about why authors would choose to feature the disease in their works. Year after year, my students and I referred to it as “The Syph”. And now here I was, staring down at the results of blood work to detect syphilis. Weird. Who knew this would be something that might prevent me from being a donor?

Tests results also revealed I had had chicken pox (no kidding! a particularly horrid 2-weeks when I was 24 and only a few months before my wedding day) and Epstein-Barr, which among other things, indicates traces of the mononucleosis virus (REALLY??). I had never been diagnosed with mono and tried recalling a time in my life when I might have been sick enough that it could have been mono. But honestly, as a 50 year old with three kids, I’m lucky I remember far more interesting tidbits of my life, including the time when I received a call from a college ‘friend’ telling me he had mono. He had to call several of his female ‘friends’ that morning. Eww! 

In retrospect, I am utterly grateful to have had this full and complete look ‘under the hood’ so to speak. Very few healthy 50 year olds would ever have the opportunity to learn this much about their overall health; a healthy younger donor would rarely need the majority of these tests. Even my general practitioner commented on the sheer volume of tests when he read my chart during my yearly physical. I have discovered incredible things about myself that I would otherwise have never known had it not been for the decision to try and become a living liver donor. Yes, I feel incredibly lucky to know I am extremely healthy, “especially for a 50 year old” as the donor coordinator expressed to me over the phone, summarizing the acquired information. That declaration felt pretty awesome at the time.  And though I might have felt differently had the results not been so positive, perhaps uncovering a condition preventing me from donating whilst simultaneously revealing my own potentially scary health concern, knowing could have offered it’s own life-saving implications. 

So in the end, I have learned about my cholesterol and heart functionality–both amazing for my age. I confirmed the fact that I am still intensely claustrophobic, thank you MRI, where I had a full blown panic attack within seconds of them sliding me into the tube (the poor nurse had only returned to the screening room when I began to feverishly press the I’m-in-distress button. As it turned out, I was allowed to take off my Covid mask during the test and was able to relax myself for about the first 20 minutes of the test and talk myself into not giving up for my recipient’s sake for the remaining 5–afterall, I doing all this to undergo a major surgery, and I can’t get through lying in a tube for 30 minutes!! Get your life together, woman!). I learned my liver was large enough for a man who weighs at least 70 pounds more than me and is six inches taller than me (in qualifying to donate to a particular recipient, your liver must be the right size match. I was told at the early stages that I might not be able to donate directly to my brother-in-law because our body types were so different). My surgeon walked into the exam room and pronounced “good news, you have a man-sized liver.” That one is still one of the funniest moments of my entire adventure. My recipient was able to receive 60% of my liver, which was a perfect size for him, still leaving me plenty to regenerate within three months of the surgery. I can also look back and think about how it may be a little cart before the horse that the psych evaluation is done before you learn you have met all the criteria to become a donor, because it’s only AFTER you find out that you start going a little mental (more on that in a later installment). The depth and breadth of the information I gained about myself could fill pages and pages and most of which I don’t understand more than just “congratulations, you qualified.” 

So on January 14, 2021…I had become–The Chosen One!