My sister Janice wasn’t even forty-years old when she suffered renal failure. She knew it was coming . . . the end of life as she knew it. That’s what happens when you have a genetic disease in the family – you know what you’re in for . . .
As she became sicker, she added her name to the transplant waiting list. Her kidney function had declined to dangerous levels. Back then – in 1995, there weren’t as many people’s names on the waiting list compared to today. There were not quite 37,000 names on the list compared to over 110,000 today.
Hope was wearing thin. The doctors scheduled Janice to start dialysis on Wednesday, January 11, 1995.
Somewhere a terrible tragedy occurred resulting in the death of a child the day before Janice was due to start dialysis. A child saved my sister – a child whose parents donated the child’s organs. I think of the child and the family often. Sorrow and our Joy intertwined. I will be forever grateful.