When my 26-year-old daughter called to tell me that she’d made the decision to donate one of her kidneys to her best friend, Kaycee, I was not a happy woman. In fact, I was against it - wholeheartedly, or in this case,  whole-kidneyedly.

A few days later, I talked with her father and he made a valid point.

“Rose,” he told me, “the odds of those two girls being a match are one in a million. Don’t worry about this. Chances are good that once she’s tested, it’ll all end right there.”

Several weeks later, there was another phone call from Crystal.

“Mom, please understand,” she pleaded. “There’s a good chance Kaycee will die if she doesn’t get a kidney within the next year or two. She’s 24 years old and has already been on dialysis for 18 months. This is something I have to do. Tell me that you’ll support me in this.”

And then I sighed a motherly sigh and promised her that I’d try to grow into a supportive parent.

A few weeks passed when the next phone call came. “Mom, we’re a match. The doctors are stunned. They say that we’re as good a match as if we were siblings. I told Kaycee that there’s a reason that we always felt like sisters. I knew we’d be a perfect match. I just knew it.”

The surgery was scheduled for April 23, 2007. I told Crystal that I’d fly to Peoria, Illinois for the surgery. I was still not happy about this but I knew I had to do the right thing for my little girl.  My sweet little girl.

Less than five weeks earlier, I’d remarried and now I asked my new husband to fly with me. I couldn’t imagine doing this alone.

Continued at Kidney-shaped Hearts, Part II

Crystal (on the far left) with her sister Anna, Grandma Betty and cousin Laurel (1985)