weak in the moment

Nine days without a left kidney.
This is the first I've been able to write, apart from a misplaced "remember this:" scritching on a napkin or envelope.
Everything makes me cry. And not tear up, cry... everything feels as though my soul is welling up in my chest and leaking desperately through my eyes. Everything feels desperate. So overwhelming. So intense.
Holding a computer to write while supine is a struggle. My stomach feels pressed even when it is not.
I just want to write some notes.
"Every time I touch myself," I tell Courtney," I find a bruise or knot or something gross or sticky or some tape residue or something."
"You're not supposed to touch yourself."
"Har. Har."
I now see why they didn't want to shoot Heparin into my tattoo-covered left arm. My right bicep and tricep are dotted with burgundy red spots followed by comet-tails of deep purple, expanding in size. The painful stinging injections came every eight hours.
In the past nine days I have felt so weak and vulnerable. So tired, sad, sick and scared. I have felt fearful and hopeless and, I admit that in my worst moments, even regret.
I was pondering "altruism" and what it means to give of yourself. What it means to help when you don't have to. To do things that are good even when you seem crazy (and yes, to myself, I do now seem insane. I'm on board that train. This was insane). I was pondering, from my cold hospital bed, what all this meant when a little voice that was not my own said to me very definitively: "this IS altruism. It fucking hurts."

Right before this I was pacing, clutching a rolled up "pillow" of taped together towels to my incision site. I finally pressed the call button and asked for my nurse. Having had the day's only pain medication about two hours prior, my pacing and sobbing in pain made no sense. "It just hurts so much!" I wailed, begging her desperately to help me. She agreed that this must have been due to the frightful opiate-induced constipation I had been experiencing since my surgery 7-days prior. I could feel things moving about inside me, "but nothing will move!" I wailed.
The nurse asked if she thought I needed a laxative suppository, and I sobbed pitifully, vulnerably, "I don't know. I've never had that." "I know," she said gently, "I have and it will be okay." She asked my to lay down on my left side as I continued weeping. At that moment I felt very much the way I imagine a new-born kitten to feel. Weak and blinding, wailing for comfort. Unable to feed or even poop for itself. So fragile, able to be completely crushed lifeless with a single squeeze or harsh step.
"There," she said, snapping off a rubber glove. "Keep that in for as long as you can and in 15 or 20 minutes try to go to the bathroom." I continued weeping, not moving, peering at the clock on the wall at the foot of my bed.

Finally. Finally I went to my bathroom and removed the little urine collection "hat" that sat mocking me in the toilet and placed it carefully in the shower, and finally.. things started to get much better.
After a long time and I had finished, I returned to my bed and resumed my weeping. I was unsure why, but presumed it must have been from relief. I thanked God, apologized as I always do for being out of touch, and asked for his hands on my very broken-feeling body.
Two days after I awoke to find this morning... a beautiful day and a happy black dog waiting for my attention. I took a long hot shower, attempting to lessen to pain in my back that is now entirely without chemical assistance.
I put on my robe and socks (I've been in New England far too long... it just took me three tries to spell socks without putting an "x" in it), and slowly shuffled back to my bedroom like a crippled old woman. Imbued with a new hopefulness and fortitude, I wanted to throw on my clothes, run down the stairs and out to the sidewalk with my dog. I sat and faced my dresser after choosing a couple articles of clothing. I sat, underwear around my knees, and picked the purple glue from my incision site, examining it carefully. I listed to three days worth of voicemails, including several minutes from my mother regarding the dietary solutions for constipation. (As she was leaving this message, I was in the bathroom at the hospital finally finding relief)

I looked around at my dirty room in disarray and recalled the sweaty, vomiting desperation of Sunday and my ambulance ride with dear Sarah. The sweet girl who has been dating me "not seriously" for about a month, found herself in a terribly serious situation when I couldn't stop the pain, the weakness, the vomiting on noon at Sunday. I finally, desperately asked her to call 911 and paramedics arrived within minutes. As I wept pitifully, a flurry of EMTs and firefighters told me how amazing it was that I had donated my kidney the week prior - and to no one I knew. Time and time again, this part was particularly amazing. The men were kind and thoughtful. As I cried softly, my insides being tossed about like a salad in the ambulance, the EMT remarked, "wow... this really makes me want to pay it forward. I feel like I should do something for someone. Do something with my life." The firefighter to my right agreed. I shook my head in surprise. "I'm sure you guys are doing okay." The firefighter joked, "Nah," he said pointing. "he's saving lives. I'm just putting them at more risk."
Maybe everyone always feels like they're not doing enough to help. There really isn't "enough" for some of us, is there?
At the hospital, I experienced the worst pain of the entire kidney-removal endeavor when the ER nurse attempted to insert a butterfly needle. I squeezed Sarah's hand hard until she stopped. She asked that I remove my clothing and I asked Sarah's assistance in doing so. After we sat in silence for a few minutes I remarked, "this isn't really "Craigslist casual," is it?" She laughed.
"Well you didn't post in the "casual" section."
"I don't know what section I did post in, but I'm not sure it covers this." Again she laughed and squeezed my hand.
We laughed about the people we could hear talking about me in the ER. Countless times someone would say, "just last week? She donated her kidney?" "And she didn't know the person?" "Wow." "And it was anonymous?" "Oh I don't think I could do that." "She didn't even know them?" "No, I'd never do that."
Kate would later ask about my relationship with Sarah, and whether it was weird to be in such an intensely vulnerable and intimate situation with her. I expressed my tremendous gratitude for her. I joked again about craigslist and noted that perhaps I should have posted in some "over-65" forum where I might find someone who can "knows the names of my doctors, can take off my clothes in the emergency room when I can't, knows to pack up my CPAP machine, etc... someone who enjoys short ambulance rides and slow walks around the block. Oh and sunsets."

Though I'm still weepy and feeling weak, Denise (the transplant coordinator) says I'm "turning the corner" and will very soon be in tip-top shape.
So for now I have waves of nausea. I have an arm that looks like it's been pelted by a BB gun. I have purpley-glued incisions on my swollen chubby abdomen, and an insistent burning in my left shoulder indicating trapped CO2. I am continually overwrought with emotion over the largest and smallest of things. I have happiness and worry for the fate of my now out-on-its-own kidney... and I have felt shame during the dark of night, when I have thought, just for a moment, "Why did I do this? What was I thinking? Was this a mistake?"

But as I reminded myself in a conversation earlier this evening, it's been all pay-out thus far. I've yet to reap any of the emotion benefits of this gift. Thus far it's been only pain and suffering.
Here's to altruism.
It fucking hurts.