Crossing the River by Carol Smith

Author:Carol Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2021-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

I was laughing now, and crying, and something that was both and neither, my whole emotional wiring short-circuited and scrambled. The corner of Griffith Park appeared out my driver’s side window. Christopher had loved playing at Travel Town there, bouncing on the conductor’s seat of the old parked train. I could picture him signing vigorously that he was taking us home. But nothing could reverse where we were headed. No train could bring him back to me now.

In Pasadena, Christopher grew with the aid of his stomach feeding tube. With each pound gained, though, his damaged kidneys became progressively less sufficient to keep him alive. His body began to bloat. His bones turned brittle. When he was five, he went into end-stage kidney failure. He still was not big enough to qualify to receive an adult kidney transplant, so his doctors at UCLA started him on peritoneal dialysis at home to buy time.

Every evening, I checkmarked my way through a sterile procedure to hook him to a device the size of a washing machine. I’d set a timer to scrub my hands with antibacterial soap for three minutes, put on a mask and gloves, calculate how much glucose to put in his dialysate solution, and soak every surface that connected the machine to his body with iodine for four minutes before beginning.

A port went straight into his peritoneum, the lining of the stomach. The machine flushed fluids through his peritoneal cavity all night, ridding his body of its daily buildup of toxins. Any contamination could result in a deadly case of peritonitis. I taped a set of clamps and sterile scissors next to his bed in case I had to cut him free of the machine in an earthquake or fire.

Days, I kept track of his fluid weight, temperature, and blood pressure, alert to any sign of infection or that his condition was turning critical. Nights, I lay in an edge state, not quite sleep, listening for machine alarms. The prospect of a power outage terrified me. We were on life support.

He needed a kidney soon. Dialysis was an imperfect substitute and he was growing weaker by the day. After a few months, he could no longer walk, his wasted legs unable to bear his weight. With his complicated medical history, Christopher had been considered too high risk to go on a regular donor wait list for a kidney. Our best shot was from a living, related donor.

Our families volunteered to be tested along with Frank and me. The morning we got tested, I threw up in the corridor of the hospital, pressing my forehead against the cool wall and heaving up years of worry about this moment.

The transplant had hung over us for so long, enormous in its implications and terrifying in its finality. It could mean a normal life for Christopher. Or it could mean the end of our hope for one. One of us had to match. Without a match, Christopher would be yoked indefinitely to a regimen of clinic visits and regular blood cleansings, his growth permanently stunted.

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