The Tree

 

 

 

This is the waiting room at the transplant clinic at HCMC. It is a place that Corey and I spent a lot of time at following his tranplant. We had to go to the clinic three times a week for NINE weeks as part of his follow-up. Sometimes we looked forward to it because it was our only chance to get out, but most of the time it was just tiresome to have to drive all the way down to Minneapolis three times a week. But, if the drive was the only issue we had to deal with who were we to complain. The more we talked to people we would meet in the waiting room, the more we realized how lucky Corey was. It is almost unheard of to get a transplant without ever having to start dialysis. "How long were you on dialysis?" was a question Corey was asked frequently by the other patients who had received a transplant. Most of them were incredulous when he told them he had never been on dialysis. Lucky doesn't seem to be a big enough word to describe what had happened to us.

So, what's with the tree? This was just one wall of the waiting room. The tree and it's branches and leaves extended and grew over two other walls in the waiting room as well. Every single leaf represented someone who had received a kidney transplant and every acorn represented an individual who had donated a kidney. They used different colors for each month of the year. I would sit and stare at this thing and almost become overwhelmed with what it represented. Every week I would ask when we would get our leaf and acorn and then, one day, there we were.......