Gerald Calabritto

LIVING Kidney DONOR NEEDED

We all know life is hard, but living shouldn't have to be.
Living (if you can call it that) with kidney failure is a daily fight to just survive. I have tried to keep working but sometimes dialysis is the only job my body can handle. It's exhausting, physically and mentally. I have to travel a lot for work and used to for pleasure but being dependent on a machine to say alive makes it hard to go far, if anywhere. Everything has to be scheduled around dialysis. Imagine having to schedule your day... your life, around something that most bodies do naturally without you ever having to give it a thought. Some days you just want to get up and go as you please or maybe just stay in and do absolutely nothing... but wait, you can't because your body can literally shut down and kill you if you don't get to dialysis 3 times a week for 3.5 hours a day in order to get the life saving treatment you need. It's depressing to realize that although you're blessed to have the medical treatments and support you need to stay alive, but you're also no longer able to really live.

3.5 hours hooked up to a machine in order to stay alive really doesn't sound like a bad deal... and compared to the alternative, I guess it's not. But after those 3.5 hours, it doesn't end there. Most days I feel like I just went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson or ran a marathon I didn't train for. Some days begin and end with that 3.5 hours. Dialysis is also known to put stress on your heart but what I didn't know was the stress it would put on the hearts of my loved ones. The days I am ready to just call it quits my sister, my nieces, great nieces, and God Daughter all remind me that my life isn't just mine. It's also theirs. And anyone who knows me knows, as long as "Uncle Jerry" is needed, Uncle Jerry will be right there! Our family saying has always been "Uncle Jerry will fix it" but for the first time ever, Uncle Jerry can't fix this.

This is what brings me here... with a hope and a prayer... to find a living donor. I am 68 years old and after 72 they will only do a transplant for me with a live kidney. I have been on the list for over 2 years. They say the wait for me is 5 to 6 years. A living donor does not have to be a match for me. If someone were to donate a kidney to me that isn't a match they will do a kidney exchange to find a match for me while providing a match for someone who my donor matches with. It's truly an amazing process that's saving multiple lives at once.

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