A few weeks later I was coming back from my early 30th birthday party in Rome and I switched my phone on.  Alison had left a message saying she had the results.  The next morning I went into my boss's office at 9 am to call her back and find out what the results were (I later found out that Alison is usually in very early - probably because of nervous people like me.) 

I was a match.  So was my older sister.  My younger sister wasn't.  I called my mum, Joel and my younger sister straight away.

We still had to wait for my older brother's results.  My first thoughts were with my younger sister.  Joel would be fine, because he had at least two matches.  None of us had even considered the possibility of there not being a match, I suppose because there are so many of us.

 

My younger sister has always been incredibly close to Joel.  They were more like twins than brother and sister, and more like twins than some twins I know.  I knew that it would hurt her that she wasn't a match.  Now I feel glad that she wasn't, because I can hold no resentment for her not doing it instead of me, although I can still be annoyed when she says she would have done it had she been a match (people say it, but it's like, and... )  She was shocked, and there was also a subtle change in the way she talked to me about the operation, from then on she always asked me if I was alright at least twice every time. 

"How are you?"

"Fine?"

"But…how are you?"

Sorry my dear, but it isn't a better question the second time around.

I won't lie.  I wanted my older brother to be a match, because then by default he would be the donor.  He would be the donor because it would avoid all those grey issues about having babies.  Unfortunately he wasn't a match.

The night my mum called to tell me I felt the floor drop out from under me.  I called my older sister and she brushed me off, I think she was going to an evening class.  I wanted to talk to her about it, but she was too busy.  I felt bad for thinking that she was flaking out, but down deep I knew that she was.  Her phobia of needles is huge.  I called my younger sister, but I couldn't get my head around the situation.  It wasn't late but I felt exhausted so I went to bed.

That night and the next morning I was in tears.  The hugeness of what was about to happen submerged me.  I felt completely pointless, as if giving a kidney was the biggest thing I could ever do.  As if everything I did was nothing, the work I put into filmmaking, my writing (for which I was up for a scholarship to Los Angeles at the time), none of it was anywhere near as important as letting somebody cut me open and take part of me away.

The next morning I called in sick to work.  I had been struggling with a cold, and with that and the depression I felt I could hardly get out of bed.  (Not so brave and cool now huh?)  I don't know how many hours it went on before it finally clicked that it was important, my life was important, everything I did was important because it was what I had chosen to do with my life, and because I love it.  There have been times since then that I have struggled with a sense of loss of identity, of thinking that I have nothing better to offer the world than a kidney, but I know that that is not true, and I have not really believed it since then (much.)

I actually pulled myself together when I spoke to Joel.  Talking to my mum, to my sisters, we were all keeping up the front that it was still between me and my older sister.  With Joel there was no bullshit.  I said "I guess it's me then." And he said "Yup."  And then we started talking about the stuff we would do, that we would sit around and watch Jackie Chan movies, and that I wanted them to give him a fat transplant too (take the bad with the good.)

Alison needed to know which of us was going to go through with the transplant before she could arrange for us to have the tests.  The way it works, because my older sister and I were both good, but not perfect matches, with the same imperfections, was that one of us would go through the tests and give a kidney.  If that person wasn't up to it then the other could go through the process, but if one of us gave a kidney and it rejected the other wouldn't be able to give a kidney, because it would reject in exactly the same way.

It felt right that we would sit down face to face and discuss the matter, but my older sister was busy that weekend, so we arranged to meet up the next Saturday.  This wasn't ideal for me because I had to shoot a music video the next day.  It was all scheduled and arranged and it meant I would have to drive down to Portsmouth and back, and that, added to all the arrangements for the video, was a pretty heavy load.  Not to mention all the things going round in my head.

Although I knew in my heart that it would be me giving the kidney, a part of me hoped that my big sister might save the day and insist on doing it.  As unrealistic as this was, I suppose it's good that we never give up hope on our families. 

It really pissed me off that my older sister was late - especially as I had to drive back to London, and it also pissed me off that my family seemed to have all forgotten that I was shooting the next day.  An event that was important to me, something I had been developing for months, and it paled into insignificance beside not just the kidney transplant, but everybody else's day to day routine.  We discussed, or argued for a few hours, back and forth.  I said all the reasons I should do it, she said all the reasons she should do it.  Then I said "Okay, you go ahead and do it then."  It was at this point she admitted that she and her boyfriend would like to try for a baby in January, so it really wasn't the right time for her.

So that was it.  It pissed me off some more that it was assumed that I would stay with my mum or my sisters, but if my older sister were to do it she wanted to stay in her own home and have everyone come and look after her.  I know my flat is small and far away from everyone, but nonetheless it pissed me off.  What pissed me off even more was that my older sister decided to try and talk me into moving to Portsmouth… again.  It's not as if this hasn't been tried before. 

"Oh Pearl it would be so much easier if you lived down here.  I can't see why you want to live in London."

I did try to live on the South Coast before, but I found it impossible to find enough people to work with on films.  Up in London I got to develop film projects, and have a life. 

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as she also tried to get me to come back to England when I lived in Paris, but that's another story.

Anyway, as you can imagine, in addition to everything else, and the thought of giving up my life, such as it is, for three to six months, I was pretty miffed that my family was trying to use the transplant to get me to give up my life, such as it is.  I, personally, felt that I was making enough sacrifices, but sadly, some people don't see it when they're presenting what's in their own best interests as what's in yours.

Maybe you're wondering why I didn't just tell them to f*&! off.  Sometimes I wonder why myself, when so many of the promises that people make, and just the average expectations you have of them fall apart, but the truth is, that in all of this, Joel was just sitting quietly by.  He was really upset, I could tell, by the discussion.  Sometimes I thought he was angry, and I was worried that he would turn around and tell us all to forget it, because he can be incredibly stubborn when he wants.  You see, he never once asked me to go through with it.  He never once asked me to move to Portsmouth, to do anything.  In my film work he is one of the most supportive people I know, he is constantly inspiring me, and he really does understand me.  He knew what it meant for me to give up what I was doing for six months, but by the same token I could see him sitting there, without the energy to carry on with his work.  When I look back at photos of him before the operation I wonder how we could have stood to see him so ill and lifeless, the truth is that I held it together because I knew he was going to have the operation.

I gave my kidney to Joel, for him and for my sake too.  I knew I could tell everyone to piss off and I'm sure I did at one time or another.  Putting up with what's going on your family's heads is just another part of the difficulties of a kidney transplant.

What upset me most was knowing that, in addition to all the other problems I was going to have to deal with after the operation, was the fight to get back to my own home, and having to listen to my older sister telling me how I should live my life when I wasn't well.