Transplant Couples Therapy

It's not for everybody.  But going through an organ transplant is very therapeutic for a marriage.  You get six weeks away from your home routine and have the opportunity to focus on what really matters.  Your future suddenly becomes unpredictable and scary.  As you watch the surgeons take your spouse into the operating room, it hits you like a brick to the head.  What if I never see this person alive again?  

There's a defining moment in every relationship.  For most it is likely something wonderful and pleasant.   The day you were married, or the birth of a child, maybe that wonderful retreat where you were able to reconnect and rekindle the flame of desire that somehow got lost in day-to-day living.  As your partnership matures, these moments change from great experiences to challenging ones.  Where once we would celebrate a promotion, new home, or the arrival of a puppy, we now revel at the sight of 500ml of pee.  As you age, joyful times morph into painful events like unemployment, distrust, illness, and death.  They eat into matrimonial bliss like termites destroying your home's foundation.  You can't see the damage these life events create but it's there.  The evidence becomes obvious after the damage is done and there's no going back.  You wake up one day and realize, it's time to repair the foundation.

Kidney failure has drawn us closer to each other.  There is nothing selfish about helping another deal with illness.  You get broken down to the basics, to what really matters in life because the alternative is death.  Our kidney disease voyage allows us the opportunity to learn what our relationship is really made of.  Diabetes and associated complications is a "true grit" challenge in our lives where we test our commitment to each other every day.  It gives us a common goal, shared experiences, and oddly enough a mutual vision of transplant and dialysis free living.  I setup Levi the cycler for my wife every night because I understood she had to endure ten hours of tethered entrapment and abdominal discomfort while she is filled and drained with nine liters of fluids.  She looked at this as a chore for me, but really, it was a pleasure to do this for her.  I wanted to give her this special gift every night to show my love and commitment to her and our mutual fight against this disease.  Kidney failure is depressing enough, let alone the degrading treatments patients have to endure.  As a spouse helping your partner through illness it's important to be supportive, loving and compassionate, to give your partner hope and inspire them to keep trying.  Had I known dialysis was inevitable, I would have written my original wedding vows differently.  They would have read "'In sickness and in health, and to setup your dialysis cycler every night." 

We have not reached our goal.  We are not totally in the clear, but this time away has been therapeutic for more than health reasons.  Three days a week we have clinic appointments beginning with lab tests and followed-up by a visit with the transplant team.  This consumes 12 out of an available 168 hours per week. The rest of the time we are together and free to talk about what matters.  To dream about the future again.  Although we miss our dogs immensely, we also understand this departure from the norm is an opportunity to refresh our marriage and renew our promise "to have and to hold until death do us part."  God willing, and thanks to the thoughtfulness of a donor family, this latter part is now postponed for a long time.

When we celebrate our 30 year anniversary in 2023, we will renew our vows.  But this time they will be written much differently.