Kidney Karma

Someone I know has a career in assisting people with Diabetes (and perhaps other illnesses) and their families.  Yesterday this person was telling me she had a client + family appointment where the father needed a kidney from one of his three kids (adult children, I'm assuming) in order that he live.  No kidney transplant = death.

I was first aghast that there even had to be a meeting about this kind of thing...deciding if any one of the three would offer up an organ for dear old Dad.  I was told the family was dysfunctional, and that the purpose of the appointment was to make a decision:  let the father die, or someone pony up a kidney.

And so I thought about this a bit last evening, through my fits of wretched coughing and blasted headache, and wondered why in the name of all that is medical and surgical would anyone refuse to donate a kidney to their parent.  After all, I surmised, they can't be that dysfunctional if they all agreed to this appointment, right?

Well today I spoke with my acquaintance and asked how the appointment went.  She told me that they made a decision.  And then I just knew what they had decided.  The children had decided to let their parent die rather than donate a kidney to save his life.  Then I learned that there was incest involved in the family and the kids felt that their donating a kidney would just be another form of rape at the hands of their father.

And so finally, now that these folks are old enough to have control over their bodies and their situations, they are in a position where they can refuse to be a victim.

That takes guts and courage and resolve.  I bet that father never once thought that he'd one day need such a vital thing, literally, from one of his children as he stole their security and childhoods.  I wonder if he's thought about how he has sealed his own fate.  I wonder if it would have made a difference.