My daughter and I went to the hospital today for blood tests. Not an uncommon occurance for my daughter who gets tested monthly but I don’t have quite as much experience.
But today is a special day for us.
My daughters kidneys have been stable at 27-30% GFR for the last couple months but we all know that her nephronophthisis that my wife and I gave her through a couple bad genes is going to lead to kidney failure likely within a year.
After all the tests that I have gone through to test my health and especially my kidney health and output I have finally been deemed a good candidate if…. if… my blood is a good match with Taylors.
Taylor and Billy doing a Crossmatch
So today Taylor and I drove down to the hospital and each of us had a few vials of blood taken and then after this the transplant people will mix them together. We are both O Positive but for my kidney to be transplanted we need to do this crossmatch to find out if the mix of our blood is going to be a problem for a transplant.
If the crossmatch determines that we are a good match still then we wait and continue to let Taylor’s kidney function to drop further to about 15% and then we can get a transplant done.
Right now Taylor, at 30% kidney function is still a healthy and somewhat active kid. She plays, she runs around laughing, and fights with her brother, but she does get tired and misses school as well. The trouble with kidney disease in kids is that it often does not outwardly manifest but in Taylors case she does get tired and sick way more often then her brother does.
Yesterday our son Jaiden got blood tests done to check how his Creatinine levels are. Since we know that my wife and I are carriers for these bad genes we also know that each kid has a 25% chance to get the kidney disease that Taylor has so we are quietly holding our breath that Jaiden is good.
So always more drama around our house but as time goes on the murky picture of family health is getting a bit clearer
The adult contestants for season 14 of “The Biggest Loser” will include Lisa Rambo, a high school special education assistant and mother of four who wants to be a healthy role model for her children, and hopes to one day open a special needs gym in her community to help her overweight students; 21-year-old Jackson Carter, the show’s first openly gay contestant who was bullied both for his weight and his sexuality after coming out at age 14, and now works as a volunteer coordinator for an LGBT youth outreach center, and Joe Ostaszewski, a former high school and college football player who continued to eat like an active football player long after his athletic career was over.