For the past year, I’ve lived in the space between knowing and saying. I carried this truth like a stone in my pocket: heavy, pressing into my palm, always there, but easy enough to ignore if I didn’t think about it too hard.
That my kidneys were failing. That, eventually, I’d need a transplant.
But eventually is a word that lets you pretend you have more time. So I bargained. Acupuncture. Supplements. Therapies. Hope, disguised as strategy. If I did all the right things, maybe I could outmaneuver this failing body. I could rewrite the ending before I even reached it.
But last week, my numbers came back: my kidneys are functioning at just 7%.
Seven percent. A single-digit warning sign. A blinking red light on the dashboard. At 7%, my blood is thick with waste my body can no longer process. My lungs pull oxygen into a system that isn’t working. My heart beats harder, compensating for something it cannot fix. Without intervention, my body will begin shutting down.
There’s a moment, right after you hear news like that, where everything goes still.
The body tries to preserve itself, giving you just a second more to stay in The Before. And then: impact. The After. The moment where everything tilts.
Shock, cold and clinical.
Grief, slow and thick.
Anger, wild and looking for a place to land. Someone to blame. Something to break.
And then: acceptance. But not the gentle kind. The kind that grabs you by the jaw, forces you to look it in the eyes, and says: This is happening. Move.
So, we’ve been moving. Fast. Scheduling labs, surgery consults, fertility preservation, mental health, meetings with my transplant team. Soon, they will cut into my arm, build a fistula port, and reroute my bloodstream so a machine can do the work my kidneys won’t. It will keep me alive while I wait for a donor’s organ to save me. It’s not the road I would’ve chosen, but it’s the one in front of me. And I will walk it with as much grace (and dark humor) as I can.
In the early days of my diagnosis, I searched for stories like mine. I wanted proof that someone had done this before me. Had lived inside borrowed time and still made plans. I scoured the internet for someone who was still living, not just surviving. Not just recounting their struggle, but finding joy in the in-between. Someone sharing their story without being swallowed by it. Someone who had built a life that was bigger than their diagnosis. But I came up empty.
So, I’ll write it myself. I’ll carve this road into existence. Not because I have wisdom to offer (I do not). Not because I have answers (again, very much no). But because I know what it’s like to search for proof that you're not the only one. And maybe, this can be that for someone else.
This is also why I’m starting something new: a video series. An unfiltered look at this journey as it unfolds. Not just the medical side of things, but the life that continues in between. The absurdity, the small joys, the humor that keeps me sane. You, my newsletter friend, are the first to know. The inside circle. The one who hears it here before the rest of the world does.
So when the first video drops later this week, I hope you’ll be
there. Watching.
Sharing. Helping me make sure it reaches the people who need to see it. Because this isn’t just my story, it’s a story about survival, about time, about what it means to keep moving forward even when the ground won’t hold still.
If you're wondering how to help: first, just being here means more than you know. But if you want to do more, here’s what helps: prayers, encouragement, and, yes, engagement. Like, save, please SHARE my story. The more people who see it, the better my chances of finding a match. It feels strange to say that out loud, but here we are.
And if you’re still here, reading, existing in this space with me, thank you.
P.S. Make sure you're following me over here to catch the video series.
