My Experience with My Fellow Firefighters

摘要

When I was 12 years old, my mother was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. As a 12-year-old, the magnitude of that message didn't resonate. I thought it meant that my mother would take some medicine and everything would work out. I did not know that my mother would be dead 17 years later at the age of 56. All that happened between the time I learned of Mom's illness and the time of her passing changed my life. As a young man, I watched my mother struggle through a disease, day after day, complication after complication, year after year. We had a dialysis machine in our home from the time I was 14 years old. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I watched my mother go through five-hour treatment sessions from 6 p.m.-11 p.m. after she finished her normal workday. She endured this with the support and the care of the same home health care nurse for 17 years. There was a brief stint during that time when she was not on dialysis because she received a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, her body later rejected the kidney, which landed her back on dialysis with that same routine.