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There are a few things in life I always intuitively knew I was meant to do:
1) At age 18 I traveled from New York to Alaska to study maternal behavior in sea otters. However, over the years and decades to come, I eventually came to study maternal behavior in people instead; let’s say that I consider myself a “momologist” more than a mammalogist.
2) Adopt another child with Down’s Syndrome so that Avichai, our son with Down’s, would have a playmate and not be different. Keren, years after she came into our home and hearts, married our son and they have been together ever since. Although we were open to our child with Down’s marrying, we thought to another individual with Downs, we never thought then they would marry each other. Jewish thought believes that marriages are made in heaven before one is born. Perhaps “proof” that God runs the world, and has a sense of humor.
3) Making “aliyah” – resettling in Israel out of religious and personal conviction – in 1995 with my husband and then four children.
4) Donating my kidney altruistically.
From the beginning of the donation process, I knew I had the option of backing out. However, unless there had been a medical reason that would have eliminated me, I never actually considered this alternative – especially after I met my recipient and his wife.
So, while I’m nobody’s thrill-seeker, I guess you could say that I’m a purposeful risk-taker; I believe that if you need to jump off a cliff either you will remember you have wings or God will catch you. So the idea of kidney donation was simply another intentional decision.
Each test and meeting with the social worker or psychologist, approval panel, or doctors were hoops to jump through so that I could do what intuitively I knew I was supposed to: help save someone’s life.
I would have been deeply disappointed had I not been able to help someone and save a life, but am, also, uncomfortable when people praise what I have done since for me it’s just doing what I felt was expected and right. The deed has given me so much more than I could ever put in words.
I attended nearly all of my tests and meetings, while my husband, Yisroel, stayed with our children in Tzfat, and, for this, I am so deeply grateful to him.
At first, I did not want to know my recipient’s identity, nor raise anyone’s hopes if it was not going to work out if somehow my body was not healthy enough to be accepted to the program.
One of the scheduled meetings took place at the department of transplants in Beilinson Hospital, where I waited to speak to a psychologist or social worker – a step in the screening process that the recipient also has to go through. In a common area, I sat down next to a couple in their early sixties. This being Israel, we got to talking and exchanging pleasantries. The conversation kind of went like this:
“Where do you live?”
“Tzfat,” I replied, simply.
“Oh, this Tzadika (holy person) in Tzfat might save my husband’s life,” the wife responded, expectantly.
“You need a kidney?” I queried the husband. We were in the department of transplants, after all.
“Yes!” he replied, excitedly.
“What blood type?” I asked, astonished.
“B+”
“I am B+!” I answered, thrilled.
And that is how I met David, the person who would receive my left kidney, and his wife Geula.
Coming from Tzfat we speak a lot about Jewish Kabbalah mysticism; according to Kabbalah, your Yetzer Ha’ra (commonly translated as “the evil inclination”) metaphorically resides within your left kidney.
“I hope the doctors implant it on your right side,” I quipped, because, otherwise, no one would want my Yetzer Ha’ra.
The night before surgery my girlfriend Miriam spent some time with me. That night reminded me of the night our son was to undergo open-heart surgery thousands of miles from home, back in the US. I was with our baby and my husband stayed back to be with our other children. It was so much easier to face this surgery because it was me and not my child. I also wasn’t sick, as then, so I felt I could do this, that my body could do this. I also felt that I would survive because I had children to take care of. The difference in perspective from having surgery or watching and supporting my child’s surgery was important. Parents don’t like to see their children in pain.
I had never had major surgery before so I hadn’t a clue of just how atrociously nauseous I would be afterward. I threw up for 24 hours which was – to put it mildly – not heaps of fun. Miriam, however, was there, bedside, and lovingly helped me each time I threw up. As long as I did not move too much the pain was manageable. Geula was taking care of David but would slip in to check up on me and give me updates on David.
The next morning, I was still fairly weak from the procedure and the post-surgical trauma. I joked that it was like a C-section without having to get up at 2 am to feed a newborn. Yisroel came to see me and helped me slowly walk across the hall to see David who was also recuperating from the ordeal. I thought I would just jump back to normal (…silly me). It hurt when I moved so I used Optalgin, a bitter-tasting liquid pain medication. You’d think they’d give you sugar water to chase it down… but, no.
Well, at least I didn’t require morphine.
By the second evening, I was able to slowly walk up the corridor and back. Geula did a round with me, and then Miriam, and then, I struggled and succeeded, by myself. I was released to home recuperation after the third day. It took about a month to fully recuperate and I remember sending my husband away to Uman, in Ukraine, the annual pilgrimage site of a revered rabbinic sage, a month later because it was Rosh Hashana – and I felt he needed a prize for supporting my donation.
If – God forbid – anything had gone awry, he would have been taking care of all of our children, alone.
Eleven years downstream – aside from some hearing loss, which could also be genetic (FWIW, in Chinese medicine, there is a connection between kidneys and hearing), I don’t feel any different, besides a need to stay hydrated more than average.
My recipient, David, along with Geula and his family, are all very dear to me. It is one of the things I have done that I am most proud of – along with birthing six of our ten children.
When Avichi and Keren got married a year after my donation, David and Geula attended the wedding. When people asked them, “So what is your connection to the Ben-Baruch family?” Geula replied, “We’re blood relatives.”
I feel very grateful for my relatively quick recovery and lack of medical complications. I feel I was just a small part of this comprehensive miracle and a lot of credit goes to the doctors, nurses, and research that enables live donation.
If you can, consider becoming or supporting kidney or liver donations.
In hindsight, I think it was as difficult a recovery as a C-section, and, although you don’t receive a baby in the end, you do save a life.
