Backstory
I landed in the Reno Airport in August of 1999. This 22-year-old kid from Georgia flew in to see Grandpa after a family tragedy. My grandmother was hit and killed after stepping onto Bath St. in Carson City, when the driver was temporarily blinded by the morning sun.
Grandpa and I hadn’t seen much of each other since I was in elementary school. Staying a couple days with him, I quickly realized he wasn’t equipped to fly solo, so I made a decision to not fly back home.
Having a little bit of newspaper experience, I landed a job with the Nevada Appeal. From there, I would go on to work nearly 8 years, hook up with the cute freckled lady in the pressroom, married her, then made a bunch of babies.
After my newspaper career, I slid into the realm of handheld electronics [construction calculators] where I worked another 8 years. I would eventually get bored of that and run away to work for the world’s most famous legal pimp where I would then get into fights with a church, get my boss into office, start a statewide hero movement, and get a kidney hacked out in San Fransisco.
Work History
As mentioned above, I’ve had a somewhat interesting career. I’ve never been wealthy doing it, but I most enjoy graphic design. I’ve done it for newspapers, product development, packaging, marketing, community health, and more.
Kidney Donation
In June of 2019, I took part in a 4-way kidney transplant at California Pacific Medical Center in San Fransisco. This was my second time in this city, the first being the final round of testing before surgery.
My intended recipient was a man named David, who lived a couple streets away from me in Dayton, Nevada. I saw him posting on a couple local facebook groups for months, desperately seeking a donor. He had been on the transplant list for 5 years, suffering kidney failure.
Why me?
My wife thought I was crazy when I told her I wanted to sign up to be a potential donor. My boss at the time pulled me into a meeting, where she and the CFO tried to talk me out of doing it.
It felt like I was standing in a crowd of people, watching a man drown, and nobody was jumping in to in to save him. I didn’t know him, but I couldn’t willingly stand by and let him die, even if everyone else was. Somehow, I felt obligated to do it.
After the many rounds of tests over couple months, I was found to be a universal match for any humans in need. However, I discovered years later, Sutter Health may have cut some corners at my expense to get that kidney, voting to look past some of my health issues I wasn’t aware of at the time. There are also discrepancies in the surgical notes and what shows up in my X-rays. For this reason, I recommend people in this region avoid Sutter Health, and rely on UC Davis for transplants instead.
It turned into 4-way swap
When I signed up to donate my kidney, I opted for the Paired Exchange Program, which would add more donors and recipients to the mix, in case I didn’t match for David. Since I was a match, were were scheduled to move forward until the day I got a phone call.
I was told by the transplant coordinator that we had a woman who was especially hard to match, and they wanted to test my golden kidney for her. I agreed, so a whole new round of testing would determine I was good for her, and her daughter’s kidney was a match for David.
The transplant team’s policy was to not reveal the identities of the other donor and recipient, so that remained a mystery until my annoying pattern recognition abilities kicked in during the final round of tests. I knew the gender and age of my new recipient, and I noticed someone matching that demographic in each waiting room. Eventually, I approached her to ask if she was getting my kidney. We’ve been friends ever since!
Recovery
I can’t lie, healing from a kidney donation really hurts for about a week. There’s stitches, rearranging guts, nausea and all sorts of fun. After that, things improve fairly quickly in the following weeks. The abdominal binder they gave me at the hospital became my best friend during that time. I also found CBD to be helpful.
Life since donation
Since I had to quit smoking to donate, that was one beneficial side-effect. It was somehow easier to accomplish when someone else’s life was on the line. Another perk would be hydration. I never drank enough water prior to surgery. Since then, I have always been thirsty so I pound the H2O often.
I do have to be a little more mindful of my diet, but I never really liked the brown sodas much anyway. Apparently star fruit is now poisonous, whatever that is.
For the most part, there is no significant difference living with a single bean.
From what I’ve been reading on her Facebook posts, the lady who received my kidney, she seems to be doing great, as is her daughter who gave her kidney to David. Unfortunately, David only lived for a couple more years after transplant.
Desert Pigs
In June of 2018, I gathered a small group of friends and one of my kids to yank a dumped sofa out of a sandy wash near my house. Other residents kept complaining about all the illegal dumps, so I made a video to show them all how easy it would be to stop whining about it and take care of it with some gloves and a trailer.
That’ll learn me! The video was a hit, and it encouraged more people to want to join for the next cleanup. I scheduled that, then MORE people wanted to pitch in! With the volunteer and monetary support flowing in, it quickly became necessary to form a 501c3.
Desert Pigs have been going out nearly every weekend since, battling illegal dumping all over northern Nevada. We also joined forces with Clean Up Pahrump to help them tackle dumps down south.
Visit: desertpigs.com
