The worst piece of advice that I read was that a kidney transplant can heal problems within a family.  That, by giving a kidney to a “sick” sibling, feelings of sibling rivalry etc. can be resolved.  Bullshit.

The truth is that whatever problems exist in your family are likely to be there after the op.  People make promises in the run up.  It seems like such a dramatic thing, emotions run high.  There may also be a lot of protestations from family members – how much they love, admire and respect you.  This is great in the run up when you’re busy trying to set your house in order (don’t bother writing a will if you haven’t already – you’ll just stress yourself out,) and see all your friends and get to work and go to the gym.  But then suddenly you’re sitting there all day, every day, needing stuff and in the months that follow it’s easy for others to forget what you’ve been through.  You stop being the big, brave one and become the sickly, needy one… that cries.

If your family is dysfunctional before the operation it is still going to be dysfunctional afterwards – get used to it.  One of the biggest hurdles for me was how let down I felt by my family, when so many promises came to nothing – but underneath that was the anger I felt at myself for believing them.  “Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me.”  Looking back, I know they were doing the best they could in a very difficult situation, but I took it all very personally.

I am a cryer – always have been.  I cry at movies, at sunsets, at beaches.  I cry when I say goodbye to my friends.  I cry at funerals (of course.)  I cry when I am in physical or emotional pain.  I cry at books.  I cry when I feel helpless.  I cry when I’m angry.  I cry when I feel blessed.  Sometimes I cry when I feel alone, sometimes I cry at beauty, and I also cry when I yawn.

Now that I am older I actually have friends who ask me to help them cry – they feel bunged up and can’t cry.  I have come to realise that it is a natural way to release tension and stress, to feel in touch with emotion, to let go of pain.  I’ve even gone to work on a particularly bad, stressed out day after 2 hours sleep and told everyone “If I cry I’m not sad, it’s an expression of my strength as a woman.”  (I didn’t cry in the end.)  I don’t often cry in front of other people, so I need time and space to do my crying.  When I don’t cry about things and bottle it up I end up being set off and crying uncontrollably – sobbing my eyes out in some public bathroom and not being able to leave because I simply can’t stop the river of tears.  I didn’t cry when my father died – it took me nearly 20 years to finally let myself really cry for him –and when I did it was at the worst possible moment.  I had to run out of a business meeting with someone who looked like him and cry for half an hour in the toilet.  I had to explain and he was very nice – but I guess I’m only human.

When I was a kid I overflowed.  I didn’t cry about the things that bothered me, but I was generally depressed.  I tried not to cry and ended up crying more.  I couldn’t tell anybody why because I didn’t know.  If I was bullied or teased I tried so hard not to burst into tears, but then I’d be miserable later.  At night I just used to go to bed and cry with the lights out.  I guess I was a bit messed up.

After the operation there were many times when I was in pain when I cried.  It is incredible how it unnerves people - the sight of naked emotion.  I am always grateful when I come across someone who can handle it, who says “There, there.” and touches my hand – knowing that I am just letting go.

My mum and older sister unfortunately get upset when I cry.  Their response is “Well what can I do?”  They take it personally and get frustrated – but it has nothing to do with them.

Much as I love my mother and older sister it was a mistake to let them take care of me after the operation, because they struggle to understand me, to be able to handle me, to listen to me.  Instead of trusting that I know what I want and need, they second guess me.  Trying instead to figure out what they think is best for me, for the rest of the family and ultimately for themselves.  After all they are only human. 

Instead of accepting, when the doctors released me, that the best thing for me was to come home right away, I was left waiting at the hospital all day, until my bed was given away and I had to share Joel’s. 

Instead of just doing what I asked – which was to pick me up, my mother cleaned the house, my sister went food shopping (ignoring my requests for soda bread and bananas) and they all focused on putting together a TV for when Joel eventually came out (a week later.)  I think they were just not prepared for how much looking after I would need.  They were worried about having me at home, and Joel being by himself in the hospital, maybe they hoped that if they waited around the nurses wouldn’t let me go, but I just felt abandoned.  When my mother finally came to pick me up she left me in the hallway with my bag while she went back to check on something for Joel.  I burst into tears, and when she finally came out she wanted to have me readmitted, but I insisted on going home – and cried the whole way back in pain and frustration.

When I got home I walked in to find the TV being assembled and was so upset that they had been messing about with that, but worse was to come.

I sat down in an armchair and it was the most comfortable place I had been since the operation – I had been sitting on plastic hospital chairs, on hospital beds and my body was so bruised it was agony.

I burst into tears again – for myself, for having had to endure a whole day of pain when I could have been sitting in an armchair, for Joel, who I felt so guilty for leaving behind, and for the fact that he was still sitting in hard plastic hospital chairs.  My mother and older sister stood there – with no idea of what to say or do.

It went on for a couple of weeks – with my having to throw a tantrum every so often to get what I wanted:–

Some food to take my pain killers with  - “Not something funny that takes half an hour, but a little bit of bread like, now!” 

My soda bread  - “I don’t give a flying f&*^ if it’s got seven kinds of seeds and was baked this morning I want the one that doesn’t make me constipated!”

Some rest – “No, I do not want to go and have a shower, I want to sit here in my pyjamas and watch any crap on cable TV ‘cos I’m not sure I’d make it up the stairs!” 

Live natural yoghurt – “I don’t care if it’s strawberry, raspberry or blueberry I just want the stuff that tastes like crap but sorts my thrush out.” 

…and of course  - “No I do not want to go back to the hospital for …more pain killers …them to check my dressing …my bloods …my stitches …my cystitis …etc. …etc.)

I wasn’t very pleasant to be around – I had trouble eating, sleeping, weeing, shitting, sitting, resting, ingesting pain killers, wearing clothes, washing.  I was cranky (to put it mildly) and at my most cranky when I wasn’t getting whatever I thought might make my life a little easier – even just a video to watch to take my mind off things.

After a few weeks I gave up and got my older brother to take me home, and it was great – it took me ages to get to the shops or the video store, but I finally had some peace to do what I needed when I needed it; to sleep in the afternoon, to not have a bath for days, to eat when and what I wanted, to watch episode after episode of “Friends” and to manage my pain killers without someone looking over my shoulder, to get up and make a cup of tea when I wanted without having to make one for everyone else.

I missed Joel, but I also knew it was good to be away from him – to deal with my own state and to stop worrying about him incessantly.  Having become so close I needed to take a step back, because it was his kidney now, after all.

By Christmas my family had all but forgotten about the operation – me too, because I was normally fit and healthy – but I ended up doing too much on Christmas Eve and my back started to hurt.  I didn’t even have any pain killers with me – because I hardly used them anymore – so I went downstairs at about 2 in the morning, unable to sleep, upset and in pain, looking for paracetamol.  I opened the kitchen drawer and saw a box of pain killers and in that moment I wanted to take them all – I just wanted it to be over.

I was so shaken by the impulse that I sat down and watched TV.  “Harvey” was on, and I sat there on the sofa, breathing in and out and determined, no matter what it took that I wouldn’t be this way; that I wouldn't feel this way anymore.

I hardly did anything the next day, played with the kids.  I was on automatic pilot and after Christmas I carried on as usual, until the anniversary of the operation a couple of weeks later.  I was at work – a temp job – and my mum called me – I had forgotten – and she and Joel said thanks.  I burst into tears and sat in the work toilet sobbing uncontrollably.  When I finally got back to my desk my younger sister had called.  I called her back, expecting her to say something about the operation – but she had a tax question – to which I replied that didn’t want to talk about it …today.  I had to leave work and go home – I couldn’t stop crying.  Later two enormous bouquets of flowers turned up from my sisters.  I guess it was their way of apologising for forgetting.  But even I had forgotten – or at least pushed it out of my head.

I didn’t really know why I was crying, all I knew was that I was seriously depressed and I didn’t want to just keep taking the valium.  I found a therapist – a good one.

I started to understand that I am very different from certain people in my life – they are squares and I am a triangle, if you know what I mean.

One of the happiest realisations was that my depression and suicidal thoughts were not me, or congenital psychological problems – they were a result of my trying to live someone else’s life, and they are the natural product of the unhappiness that comes from living against one’s principles.

There is nothing wrong with my family – they just have a very different personal belief system to me – I’m a cryer.  When I hit rock bottom I realised that it was more important to live my life the best way I could than to get acceptance from my family.  Yes, it was also fuelled by anger with them and the occasional desire to not be around them, but I also figured that if I couldn’t get acceptance from them after giving a Joel a kidney it was never going to happen (he, on the other hand, has always accepted me.)

And then the bigger breakthrough – it was always me; it was always my choice to live the wrong life, to try and turn myself inside out for other people.  I am the only person responsible for how I live my life – for staying in the crappy job, for not letting people get close to me or support me, for not taking care of my physical health, for not booking that holiday that I really wanted but ultimately felt I didn’t deserve, for not getting into therapy sooner (like when I was 13) and for letting other people treat me in a way that made me unhappy. 

So then came the harder part.  Dealing with the real reasons why I'd chosen to let myself live that way.  Sitting down with a gifted and compassionate therapist and figuring out the mess I had made of things so far and how I was going to clean it up.

I’d love to tell you that therapy is easy, (I found life coaching a lot easier!) or that confronting your own personal demons makes them disappear in a puff of smoke.  I'm afraid I can't.  What I have learnt over the years is that there are times when working through your problems and battling those demons can sometimes feel harder than just living with them. 

I suppose what giving the kidney really gave to me was the belief that I deserved to live a life free of the baggage I'd been carrying around, and it also gave me a kind of fearlessness.  Having been so absolutely terrified of the operation, and yet coming through it anyway, I have become less afraid of fear.  Reading “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway” I understood how often I had stepped back from things that made me nervous, thinking I was trusting my instincts, when really I was just retreating from life.  So I took the plunge; I sat down in a Forgiveness Workshop shaking with fear and actual panic; I sat down on a beach when waves towered over my head and got in the water with a surfboard anyway; I've walked up and down mountains in China when my knees threatened to give out from shaking; oh yes and I fell off a skateboard ramp about three times because I couldn't control the board because my knees were shaking so hard; and I've picked up the phone and called the right guy; I've written the most honest emails and sent them; I've faced down my demons, and now, I am strong enough to even go and seek them out if I think there are any still left in the cupboard.

So maybe I was wrong at the beginning of this chapter when I said that the operation won't resolve issues with your family; I think that what such a huge challenge does, maybe, is to expose the issues in your family, and give you the self belief to handle them.  And perhaps more importantly to do the same with any deeper personal issues you may have.  (Of course you may be very lucky and have no issues to deal with – I hope so!)

But I warn you, in order for there to be any resolution you have to do the work.  Sometimes it's not easy, it may even make giving the kidney feel easy by comparison.  There is a saying “the only way out is through”.  For me it's been worth going through, worth all the work and pain to get to a place where I no longer live in fear, or conflict, but where I can live in peace with myself and those closest to me, confident that I have whatever it takes to deal with anything that happens in my life, and ready to embrace all the good stuff that comes my way.