What a week!

Here we are...Friday! It has been a whirlwind week! I've been on spring break this week and good thing - Emily's Kidney and her crew have been on a media roller coaster. We had two interviews with KSDK and one with David Lile on KFRU in Columbia, Mo. The response to Emily's Kidney facebook and twitter pages have been overwelming. Since Mandi and Maria started the pages at the end of January, over 2200 friends have cared enough to start following us. I can't even begin to put into words how thankful I am to everyone for helping to spread the word about organ donation and my story. I look at my life over the last three years and still can't believe its been so long. When I was first put back on dialysis in November 2007, I really thought it was going to be a minor set back. I thought my dad would be a logical donor and I would have to be on dialysis for a few months, tops. Then he was rejected. Then my sister got tested (which was beyond hard for me - my baby sister donating an organ to me? No way!) and the surgery was scheduled for May 20, 2008. And then, a week before, the transplant was cancelled - my antibody level was too high. Friend after friend came forward to be tested - 12 total - and all were rejected. I call them the "Dirty Dozen."

I can't believe three years have come and gone, all the while, I go to dialysis, have my blood cleaned every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, without fail, for four hours each time. I can't drink hardly any fluids because my body can't process it. I can't eat certain types of food, like dairy, potatoes, chocolate and lots of other foods because my body just can't handle it.

They say the wait time for the national list is three to five years - so I guess I've just entered the minimum wait time. However, with my high anitbody level, I know I have much longer to wait. My best bet is to find a living donor with low antibodies. I know my kidney is out there somewhere - and my mantra is...I'm closer today than I was yesterday, right?

I am blessed to have two clever, witty, generous and gorgeous friends in Maria and Mandi who have taken to social media because they were tired of seeing me suffering. Behind my back (lol), they created twitter and facebook pages for...wait for it...my future kidney! Yes, my future internal ogran is now tweeting from inside someone at a location yet to be determined! Using their own humor and clever kidney-isms, these lovely ladies have taken social media by storm and are doing all they can to find little ole me a kidney.

To say I am thankful is an understatement.

Since March is National Kidney Month and March 10 was World Kidney Day, we've gotten some recent media attention from our friend at KSDK, first in Dana Hendrickson and Wendy Erickson at Show Me St. Louis and then with Jeff Small, reporter. Both stories were really great and I can't thank KSDK enough! Also this week, kidney friend Emily Holtsclaw in CoMO got us on KFRU with David Lile, a great AM program. Mandi and I talked with David for a few minutes and it was a really great interview...and it was Emily H.'s birthday!

I look back on this week and the last month and can't believe how Emily's Kidney has changed my life. Yes, I was a positive person, trying to be optimistic about when my transplant would come. I feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel now - instead of just chugging along.

I can't wait to see what is in store for me and Emily's Kidney!