I had just voted for Ronald Reagan (my very first election) because of my anger for those trapped in the American Embassy in Iran. I wanted to do something. And now here was a guy telling me I could. I dropped my English major, substituted criminal justice and threw all my energy into applying for the Secret Service. It was a cold slap when the rejection letter came. If I hadn’t been so naive I would have known my ambition was doomed from the start.
The recruiter hadn’t noticed a certain something about me. That certain something has cost you, the taxpayer, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I would like to pay you back. There’s a catch, though. Death is a risk I take if I get a job. Not from hazards in the workplace, but from hazards in the bureaucracy. What happened when I was just a kid of 12 was the diagnosis of juvenile diabetes. It didn’t stop me from triple-lettering in sports as a teenager, but by my early 30s I needed new kidneys.
I got them, thanks to the kindness of a wonderful donor family and the skill of dedicated physicians. I also got a new pancreas. My diabetes was cured.
But transplants aren’t covered by many private insurance carriers, and I didn’t have several hundred thousand dollars of my own to pay for the ongoing procedures. So I, like thousands of other patients, was advised to deliberately impoverish myself in order to qualify for government medical benefits. When you’ve already flat-lined, gone blind in one eye and had three heart attacks, well, whatever they tell you makes sense. At that point your only career goal is to stay alive.
And alive I am. After dropping out of college for several years, I’ve finished my bachelor’s degree, graduating two years to the day after receiving my new organs. My professors at Ottawa University in Arizona tell me they were shocked. I’m such a big, burly guy they had no idea I was a transplant patient.
But they learned the truth about me from my research paper. They also learned that any transplant’s new life-not just mine-is frequently dominated by welfare.
There are now more than 20,000 whole-organ transplant recipients every year. This number doesn’t include bone-marrow patients. As the technology improves there will be even more. The drugs I take daily to prevent organ rejection and other complications cost about $1,500 per month. Most of us, in what should be the most productive years of our lives, would like to trot these fabulous new organs to a work site. We’d be glad to pay taxes. It would be a privilege and a joy.
Instead, I know transplants (that’s what we call ourselves) who work furtively at small projects payable in cash. Earnings of $260, if reported, would disrupt medical benefits. I know transplants who, on paper, are married. Each spouse has moved on to other relationships, but the insurance plan-now irreplaceable-is still intact.
How else do we cope? We hoard our drugs. We call it inventory. We keep any excess cataloged, stored and ready. This is our “cache of life” to guard against the day red tape chokes off those precious pills. “You need some cyclosporine? I’ve got extra,” I’ve heard. Don’t judge harshly, please. Until you have a foreign heart beating in your chest or someone else’s liver washing your blood, you won’t know how we feel.
So here’s the question: now that we’re alive, how do we get back into the swing of things? How do I get off welfare?
Most mornings I go to a coffee shop nearby. I toy with my mug of joe and watch other men-construction guys-heading off to work. I look like I should be one of them. They probably think I am. The diabetes that began ravaging my body as a child makes that unrealistic, though. Sometimes I wonder just what I’m fit for. When my mind starts playing tricks like that, I remember my bachelor’s thesis: “Some Psychological Consequences of Transplant Surgery.” I wanted to know what happens to the mind while the kidneys, heart, liver and lungs are being replaced.
While I can’t work construction, I am fit for quite a few things. With my background-I’ve worked as a patrolman, enforcing state-park laws while pursuing my original major, law enforcement-I would make a good investigator. I’m great with kids, having lettered in football, basketball and track in high school and coached several sports in public schools. I was a relief counselor in a boys’ home. Now that I have a degree in psychology, I am qualified for any of those types of jobs, and my health wouldn’t be a drawback. There are plenty of men who wouldn’t be “fit” for construction. Why should my heart squeeze with envy as those fellows shuffle out of the coffee shop in the mornings? It does because they are leaving me behind. They are contributing.
You’ve probably heard this before, but people who have had a near-death experience, as I have had, feel a need to help others. I didn’t see Elvis; I just slumped over. But those amazing doctors wouldn’t give up. And when I came back I felt that time was no longer my own. I had survived so much, surely this life of mine was a borrowed thing. I felt I should make a difference.
My professors think I can accomplish that by telling my story. By calling attention to the plight of the transplant. How odd it feels to use that word, plight. We transplants are blessed. We were all-every single one-supposed to be dead. But we really didn’t mean to borrow so much. We’re ready to give back. We want to repay all our surgeons and donor families and the miraculous society that made it all possible. We want to work!
