This week I celebrate two anniversaries. The first was May 27, 2012. My husband and I celebrated 23 years of marriage. Wow, that’s a long time, especially for a 25 year old, huh? On May 30 I celebrate 10 years of living with a pancreas transplant.

I would never have imagined that I would one day not have to take an insulin shot! When I was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 7, my grandfather told me while I was in the hospital that we would “pray it [diabetes] away”. My parents worried that I might not learn to take care of myself and instead hope for a miracle.

I had the most wonderful parents who continually made sure that I understood that I could do anything that I wanted to and be anything that I wanted to be as long as I worked hard at it. So instead of sitting by waiting for a miracle cure from God, I worked hard in school and hard at work.

Despite my hard work, my kidneys failed. My brother volunteered to save my life and donate his left kidney. My transplant team had an even more complete plan to treat my kidney disease. Their full plan of action was to perform the kidney transplant to end dialysis, and a pancreas transplant to end the cause of the kidney failure in the first place.

And so, on May 29, 2002, I took my last insulin injection. And on May 30, 2002 my new pancreas provided enough insulin to move glucose from my bloodstream to my cells, and has done so for the last 10 years.

So back to what Granddaddy said. Did he pray my diabetes away? Sure he did, not through a miraculous prong on the head, but through technology and medical science. And despite the fact that Granddaddy has been gone for 28 years, that doesn’t mean that 2002 wasn’t in God’s time.

Actually, I still consider myself diabetic. My body lived through 32 years of diabetes and I still manage some of the long term complications. I received a bronze medal for living with diabetes for 25 years from an insulin manufacturer. Do you think that they will give me the 50 year medal without having bought their product?

Americans with Disabilities Act

• 18.8 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with diabetes.
• It’s estimated that an additional 7 million people have the disease, but don’t know it.

• Being honest with your healthcare providers about all aspects of your life that may influence your diabetic care, such as your lifestyle behavior, the medications you take, and your allergies.
• Carrying through with the agreed-upon treatment plan for your diabetes, such as blood sugar monitoring, medications, and healthy lifestyle behaviors.
• Sharing any problems you’re having with your diabetes management with your healthcare providers so the plan can be revised.
• Telling others in your life about your diabetes if this knowledge can help them to support you, such as those at home, in the workplace, and at school.

• Fast Facts on Diabetes. National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse. Retrieved October 1, 2011 from http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/statistics/index.aspx3fast
• Know Your Rights. American Diabetes Association. Retrieved October 3, 2011 from http://www.diabetes.org/living-with-diabetes/know-your-rights/
• International Charter of Rights and Responsibilities of People With Diabetes, 2011. International Diabetes Federation. Retrieved October 4, 2011 from http://www.idf.org/advocacy/charter-of-rights

Lizzie Kemp

Last week we celebrated the life of my most loyal friend, my canine friend, my dog, Lizzie. We believe that even after being treated for Addison’s disease, she developed congestive heart failure. She began to retain water for which I prescribed her Lasix (the vet later agreed it would provide her with some relief) and she moved slowly around the house.

One day when she wouldn’t come in from out of the rain when I called her, I knew it was time. She didn’t understand me, or she couldn’t hear me, or she couldn’t see well–I really couldn’t tell which was the case. I ended up having to pull her in the house out of the rain. She hadn’t eaten all day either and she was extremely weak. I called my husband at work and he agreed that we should take her to the vet to be euthanized.

The next morning was hectic with things to get done. We both had a funeral to attend for a church member’s husband. My husband is a funeral director and he was handling the service. My husband loaded Lizzy into the Suburban. He had to pick her up and even though she was heavy with fluid, she managed to stand up in the back and look out of the window.

I followed in another car. My husband said that as they approached the vet’s office, Lizzie hopped over the seat into the middle section and laid her head on the front console. My husband rubbed her ears as he drove. The he said as he began turning into the vet’s parking lot, she began to cough and slumped down onto the floor.

I parked and got out of my car to try to help them into the vet’s office. When I got to the back door, Steve said that he thought that she was dead and we got the vet. He listened to her heart and confirmed that Lizzie had no heartbeat.

The way I see it, Lizzie went on her own terms. I would imagine that she found it kind of strange that Daddy lifted her into his car so early in the morning and said the word “vet”. Daddy has never taken her to the vet. Daddy has never even met the vet. Does Daddy know the way to the vet? Might Daddy be taking me on my last ride in the car?

There would be no shot, not euthanasia for Lizzie. Perhaps the anticipation was too much for her heart. And so now, when my son chooses an urn for Lizzie’s ashes, she will join Max our Shepard / Husky mix who lived to be 13 and Bandit, my mom’s Lhasa Apso, on the mantle of pets who’ve gone on. My family thanks all of them for filling our lives with such joy.

From the Huffington Post:

Facebook Organ Donor Initiative

Prompts 100,000 Users To Select New

Option

By MIKE STOBBE 05/ 2/12 05:57 PM ET

ATLANTA — Thousands of Facebook users have signed up to be organ donors this week, thanks to a new feature on the social networking site that makes it easier to register.

The new option was announced Tuesday by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a way to boost the number of potential organ donors. By the end of the day, 6,000 people had enrolled through 22 state registries, according to Donate Life America, which promotes donations and is working with Facebook. On a normal day, those states together see less than 400 sign up.

The response “dwarfs any past organ donation initiative,” said David Fleming, chief executive of Donate Life America, in a statement.

The Facebook feature allows users to share their decision to be an organ donor on the website. More than 100,000 did that by Tuesday night, according to Facebook, which is working with Fleming’s group to encourage Facebook users to also officially register as donors with their state.

A link on the site connects to online donor registries. At least 22,000 people had followed that link as of Wednesday afternoon. Information from 22 states indicates that a third or more of them filled out the form to register, said Donate Life America spokeswoman Aisha Michel.

California – where Facebook is headquartered – reported startling results. About 70 people register online as organ donors each day. But in the 24 hours after Zuckerberg’s announcement, about 3,900 signed up.

“We’re just thankful we have this opportunity to bring more people into the process,” said Bryan Stewart, a spokesman for OneLegacy, which coordinates transplants in the Los Angeles area.

“We’re looking forward to seeing how long this activity lasts, and at what level,” he added.

Facebook, a social network site founded in 2004, has 526 million daily users around the world. It was Facebook’s idea to add the option, after Zuckerberg took a personal interest in the issue, Michel said. The feature is available in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

As with some personal information on Facebook, organ donor status can be kept private or shared publicly or only with friends.

More than 114,000 Americans are currently on waiting lists for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs, according to United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the organization that runs the nation’s transplant system. More than 6,600 died last year waiting for an organ.

According to UNOS, 43 percent of adults in the U.S. are registered as donors. Organs can only be used though under certain circumstances, such as when someone dies from a major head injury and a ventilator can keep the organs viable. Less than 1 percent of U.S. deaths annually are under such circumstances. And sometimes the opportunity is lost because family members didn’t know about the person’s wishes on organ donation.

The Facebook feature “is a unique opportunity for people to make their decision known,” UNOS Executive Director Walter Graham, said on a statement.

Most people register as organ donors when they get a driver’s licenses, but about 2 percent sign up through online registries. Both represent legal consent for adults. For children who want to be donors, parental consent is still required.

Unexpected Blessings

In my chapter of Victorious Living for Women, I talk about how we can never predict exactly where our blessings will come from. In fact I detail how my difficult period of kidney failure and dialysis was, at that time, the worst thing that had ever happened to me. My kidney transplant after seven months of dialysis then became the reason I was eligible for a pancreas transplant. And what a pancreas transplant meant was that I no longer had to follow a diabetes regimen.

As I reflected back to the time of my diabetes diagnosis at the age of seven, I recall that my grandfather and pastor told me that we would just pray that [diabetes] away.  You can imagine how my parents felt about my grandfather instilling hope into their daughter that they were talking to physicians about how to prepare me for a lifetime of diabetes management. While both my parents were Christian, they didn’t want me to be confused and spend my life waiting for a miraculous cure one day.

I didn’t spend my life waiting for that cure, and instead pushed forward to live a normal life. It wasn’t until after my pancreas transplant that I reminded my grandmother of my grandfather [now deceased]’s prayer. Could it be that he did pray it away? Why do we think that when we pray, God is somehow on the clock? That He has a timeframe in which to answer our prayer. Not only does he have a timeframe, but a manner in which He should do it. “To pray my diabetes away”, somehow seemed to me and my parents for God to perform some miracle and I would somehow be cured. A simple prong on the head and diabetes would be gone!

Who would imagine that He would use physicians and technology and achieve essentially a cure?

It is with that realization that I am careful not to predict and plan where my acts of kindness go, because I never know where my blessings will come from. In other words, I don’t decide to do nice things for people that I expect a return of good fortune. The idea of paying it forward is not finding a trading partner or deciding who is worthy to receive your gift. It is passing on a gift to someone in need or deserving, without expecting anything in return.

I recently had such an opportunity. At a Writer’s Expo, a young woman, before performing a song told the story of her intent to relocate to Georgia in order to donate a kidney to a long time friend of hers. What’s the chance that I was in that room of authors–both fiction and nonfiction–to hear this story. I was in a place to tell my story and experiences of being a two-time organ transplant recipient to someone who really needed to understand the process. I was stunned, even paralyzed to listen to her. I knew immediately that God had placed me in that place to hear her story and provide information and guidance for this transplant procedure. I wasn’t even sure why I attended this Expo; it wasn’t necessarily an event that I thought I would sell many books. But I received a blessing beyond what selling several books could provide: The blessing of knowing that my story mattered.

There are so many observances throughout the year that several of them happen simultaneously. However April’s pairing of National Minority Health Month and National Donate Life Month is not pure happenstance.

National Minority Health Month

African Americans and other ethnic minorities are plagued by a number of chronic illnesses that may not be an immediate threat to life itself; however neglect of these chronic and often preventable conditions can surely lead to an early death. Perhaps the biggest of these chronic illnesses that disproportionately plague African Americans is hypertension and diabetes. According to the National Institute of Health,

“The most common causes of kidney failure are diabetes and high blood pressure, together accounting for about 70 percent of new cases.”

That bears repeating, 70 percent of new cases of chronic kidney disease is caused by uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension—both controllable conditions. Controllable in large part by good decision making: diet and exercise, and medication prescribed by a doctor. And this brings us to the next April observance.

National Donate Life Month

National Donate Life Month promoted largely by the Gift of Life Foundation encourages people to make the decision to become organ donors, either living or at the time of death so that those waiting on the transplant list, can live. There are currently more than 110,000 people waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S. Millions of organs are wasted daily when people die without donating their organs. It is a simple process to sign up on the national organ donor registry: http://donatelife.net/register-now/

In the case of kidneys, while African Americans make up 12% of the population, we make up 32% of those on dialysis.

In April and beyond, join with me to make smart and healthy decisions to improve minority health, and please “Donate Life”—my brother Jeff (my kidney donor) and another individual (my pancreas donor)’s decisions to donate life are why I live today!

Register to become an organ donor online or at your local Secretary of State office.

Don’t take your organs with you . . .

heaven knows we need them here!