When I heard that I was a candidate for a transplant, I thought, What are they talking about? This sounds like science fiction!
W hy I suffered kidney failure when I was just 19 was and still is a mystery.
The most probable explanation is that I had an untreated case of strep which may have traveled to my heart and then my kidneys. But back in the early 1970s when I contracted kidney disease the field of medical diagnostics was not nearly as advanced as it is today and the doctors could offer no conclusive reason for my inexplicable heart complications and subsequent kidney failure.
For me one of the hardest things about being sick was knowing that my parents who were Polish Holocaust survivors were suffering yet again. My father had lost a wife and children in the war; my mother who was single when the war broke out had been through three concentration camps. Neither of them had any surviving family members.
Having no one in the world but each other my parents built an exceptional marriage and home. When my mother would come home my father would say “Der zun kumpt arein in shtub” — the sun is coming into the house. Each parent would tell us children to stand up when the other entered the room.
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