TRANSPLANT UPDATE

As today's dialysis session was ending, I received a phone call from Mount Sinai's kidney transplant department. It recently made the news that the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network board has prohibited use of an antiquated kidney function test that can overestimate kidney function in Black patients, which masks the severity of their kidney disease and results in late diagnosis and delayed transplant referrals. Consequently, in what experts are calling an unprecedented move to correct racial inequity in access to kidney transplants, the board recently approved a waiting time adjustment for Black transplant candidates. The call from Mount Sinai was to alert me to my status being re-assessed, so my current projected time is somewhere around four years. They're going to send me documents outlining things in more detail, but rather than getting psyched over this news, I just let out a groan. When this journey began, I was repeatedly told that the average wait time for African-American transplant patients was between three to seven years, and I will have been undergoing dialysis for three solid years as of this coming August. Today's news basically told me that I can expect four more years of thrice-weekly treatment. Four. More. Years.

I will read the upcoming documents in detail when they arrive, just to make sure I am not mis-understanding anything, but the concrete prospect of four more years in limbo just kicked me right in the skull.