The Puffed-Cheeks Gang
By Ethel Barton
Roxanne had been connected to her dialysis machine by two thick needles that were placed in her arm and attached to thin plastic hose. One line took the blood out of her body, filtered it through the dialysis machine and the other line brought it back in.
Why did she need dialysis? When she was a baby her kidneys didn’t work like they should so all the bad stuff that should come out in urine stayed inside her and made her feel sick. But dialysis saved her and kept her alive.
She had a strange relationship with her dialysis machine, a love-hate relationship her mom said. She knew that she owed her life to it but some days she wished it would disappear. Maybe someone could steal it. But then she knew she would have been very sick and begging to have it back again.
Her parents told her that her name was being placed on a transplant list. She didn’t know what they were talking about until they explained it to her. Her kidneys would never work again so she needed a new kidney. Roxanne was put on a list to receive one from somebody else.
She had so many questions. Why would someone give her one of his or her kidneys? It wasn’t like borrowing something and promising to give it back later. They told her that kidneys could be given from someone who’s alive, usually a family member. Most people have two kidneys and can live and be healthy with only one. That is if the kidney is a match. To determine that she had all kinds of blood tests and tissue typing but in the end one of her family was a match.
So Roxanne had to get a kidney from someone else. When she was told that it would be from a dead person, she was shocked. But it was explained to her. When some people die they have given permission that any healthy organs can be used to transplant into people like her. She felt bad about that. She didn’t really want to hope for a transplant because that would mean that someone else died.
But one day in the middle of the night she received a phone call. Her parents woke her up and they headed to the hospital. A kidney was available for her. She didn’t remember anything about the operation because they gave her something to make her sleep. When she woke up she had a bandage on one side below her tummy. They’d put her new kidney in the front, so her two kidneys that didn’t work were still in the same place.
Imagine a life without dialysis? She felt better right from the start but she realized that the dialysis machine had kept her alive until some unselfish person gave her a kidney. Sometimes she wondered who that person was? But she didn’t really want to know because she knew that person was someone that other people loved and were sad that he or she had died.
Roxanne made a promise to herself that she’d look after her new kidney as best as she could. She took all the medication on time every day. She wouldn’t want the kidney to stop working because of something she did, because she was so grateful for the gift.
She went to the transplant clinic once a month where they check to see if her new kidney is working well. She saw other kids there and they smiled at each other. It’s hard to talk about something that’d changed her life so much. So she tried to lighten up. She was sitting there one time and she looked around her. All the kids had big cheeks and she started to laugh because she knew she looked the same. They have puffed cheeks because a medication they take to keep their bodies from rejecting this new organ has a side effect: their cheeks are big.
It was so funny she made up a little poem:
The Puffed-Cheeks Gang
We are no threat to society
We make our way quietly
Taking our medication without complaint
With a gleam in our eyes
A spring in our gait