As much as I live by the rule of “knowledge is power” and that we should all “seek to learn” my recent burst of information download is now plaguing me.  My newly formed understanding of the organ transplant process and the associated statistics is at the forefront of mind day and night.

I have discovered that my chances of receiving a kidney transplant in the near future are very slim.  Yes it is a numbers game, however the numbers are shrinking here in Australia and it doesn’t look like the ship is going to turn anytime soon.  And my problem with this is that  I am not naturally someone who sits back and waits for something to happen to me.  I usually take a proactive approach in my life and I like to ultimately be in control, or at least have a delusional sense that I am in control of where my life is heading.  That is why I can’t just sit back and wait for a kidney to magically appear in four to ten years.  That would drive me crazy.

What are my options?  Wait?  Die?  Or be proactive?

The bad news is that there aren’t too many options.  I don’t have a family member or close friend that can donate me a kidney and I am not going to wait around and put all my eggs into one basket – the national donor registration list.  Therefore the only option left, as I see it, is  to seek a new kidney myself.  I need to find a living donor.  I need to find a kidney hero.

This is where the keeping me awake day and night thoughts come into it.  Am I being ridiculous?  Do I really believe that there is a person out there willing to give up a kidney for me?  A complete stranger?  Do I believe that a complete stranger  will cut open their  body and give me a piece of themselves?  Do I believe that a complete stranger will take time out of their life and go through the trauma of surgery and recovery to give me a kidney?  To save my life?  To be my kidney hero?

I need to believe or at the very least have hope.  I am hoping that if I go out there with my story there might be someone, somewhere that I connect with for whatever reason and we are a match.  When I say it out loud it does sound a bit far fetched.  A bit of pie in the sky thinking.  A bit of wishing upon a star behavior.  But what else do I have?  Yes I will still be going on the national register and I will wait alongside 11,000 other kidney hopefuls  for that magical phone call that my life is being saved by a donor kidney.  But I refuse to die waiting.  I want to live.  I want to celebrate my next birthday and see my nephews go to high school.  So I am going to do everything I can to find a kidney, even if it means taking an out of the box approach.  I am going to try and find my kidney hero through social media.  I am going to put my story out there for everyone to hear.  And fingers crossed my life can be saved.

So stay tuned as I pull together my “seeking a kidney hero” page as even though it is a bit unorthodox, dying is not an option I am willing to consider…..