Update on Donna’s Kidney Transplant

Donna holding a friends baby during Woman conference 2017.

I’ve had several people reach out to get an update on Donna so I thought I figured it was time to update the blog with the latest news on our journey toward a kidney transplant. Currently, she’s still on peritoneal dialysis, she hooks up every night around 10pm and unhooks each morning about 4am. As a lot of you that have been keeping up are already aware, we were blessed to be able to get all of the equipment needed for her dialysis setup in our home. While the peritoneal is a lot more convenient and “more gentle” on her system than the hemo-dialysis that she was having to do at a clinic 4 hours a day, it isn’t perfect. As a side-effect of the peritoneal she’s noticed some weight gain recently –and for her that’s been a frustration.

While she continues to have good days and bad days as far as energy levels are concerned, she’s managed to continue to live her life without restrictions. The past few months she has been in charge of registration for an annual event that our church hosts each year for women, woman conference. She has been overseeing the registration for several thousand women and multi-day sessions. Since the conference is held in Little Rock each year at our NLC Campus she usually spends a couple of nights in Little Rock at a hotel with several of her friends / helpers for the event. This year the idea of having to carry her dialysis equipment and supplies with her could have been a deal killer for a lot of people. Not my wife, she had me load my truck up with all of her supplies and her machine and she headed on her way. I give her a hard time (because that’s my job) but she is pretty amazing –even if I’m a little bias.

As far as kidney function goes, she’s still in the 10% range. While that might sound terrible, it’s manageable for a while. She’s at the top of the transplant list and we are expecting a phone call just any day now. For this reason we jump every time our phone rings w/ an “unknown caller” on the ID.

While our spirits are high, we do get discouraged sometimes but it doesn’t last long. We lean on our faith to pull us through the hard times, something we learned early on in our marriage when we lost our daughter. We ask that everyone please continue praying that this journey will come to fruition soon.