Fear Factor

A phone conversation the other night with my great good friend over many decades, Larry Kaplan, really served to clarify some issues and emotions for me regarding my recent kidney transplant – emotions I hadn't admitted to anyone, not even myself.

I have known Larry since the first week I set foot in Detroit to work back in 1979. I was the rock critic for The Detroit News then, and the paper's staff photographers deemed it beneath their dignity to shoot rock 'n' roll bands at night for concert reviews. So the entertainment department hired Larry as my full-time freelance sidekick, doing hand-to-hand combat in the photo pit to embellish my meager words with visual splendor. In recent years, he has reserved a bedroom in his spacious condo for me to use upon my frequent return visits to Detroit, sparing me untold amounts of stress, advance scheduling and hotel fees. (Thanks, Larry.)

We hadn't talked since a month or so before the surgery, and he was asking me the kind of simple, direct questions anyone might inquire of an old friend fresh from the scalpel. "Is there a lot of pain?" (Oh, YEAH!) "Will you have to take anti-rejection medication? (For the rest of my life.)"

"Do you feel any different inside?"

Yes, it suddenly occurred to me, I do.

I'm scared.

No, scratch that. Dude, I am terrified.

Beyond the pain of recovery, my body has changed in so many dramatic ways. I'm swallowing three times the medications I was taking while on dialysis – some with meals, some only on an empty stomach, some in the morning, others at bedtime – and until I establish a routine, the sheer scheduling of the doses every day has my head spinning. "You MUST take your medicine regularly!" my post-transplant handbook warns. "Rejection will occur if you skip or stop your immunosuppressive medicine."

No pressure.

But it's more than that. Way more. I have been given an awesome gift – one so precious that sometimes, when I stop to think about it, I am moved to tears. I know that last year alone, more than 4,700 people died while waiting for a matching donor kidney like the one I now have. I know that a family somewhere is experiencing heart-shattering grief for the donor whose organ is giving me a second chance at a full, healthy life.

I know a vast network of supporters I cannot begin to tally – the transplant team, surgeons and nurses at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, my church family at Harvest Bible Chapel Decatur, relatives, friends, relatives of friends, co-workers and clients past and present, total strangers – have been immersed in prayer and positive, affirming thoughts on my behalf. My friend Rochelle Riley, the fine columnist for the Detroit Free Press, summed it up in a Facebook posting this week after my first post-surgery outing: "Yay to Jim McFarlin who's outta the house!" she wrote. "We're all so excited 'round these parts!!!"

No pressure.

I just feel there is so much victory, so much fulfillment of hope wrapped up in all of this. I could not bear the anguish of having to say to these same people at some point in the future, "Folks, my 'dream kidney' is failing...and it's because of something I did."

My immune system is intentionally suppressed. By how much, I have no idea. But living with the idea that a careless cough in the face from a 3-year-old could set my entire personal ecosystem into screaming yellow meemies is going to transform me from Average Sloppy Guy to Anxious Germophobe. I can just feel it. I'm going to make Howie Mandel look like a mud wrestler. I won't be quite as bad as Larry, who used to squirt a person's hand with sanitizer before he would shake it, but I'll be pretty insufferable for a time. Please bear with me.

I'm going to start doing all those things we tell ourselves we need to do to improve quality of life. Make exercise an important part of my lifestyle. Watch what I eat, and eat better food. Balance and manage mind and body, work and leisure. Pray more.

I can do this, Larry, thanks for asking. I have to do it.

I just don't want to screw this up.

The Kidney Call Comes

I wasn't ready.

My best friend since kindergarten, Walker Parmelee, told me not long ago that no one is ever ready when the call comes that potentially could change the rest of your life. It's like the Bible says in Matthew 25, "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour...."

Our day was Sunday, June 19. Father's Day. Four days after my 5*th birthday. The same week the State of Illinois was ordered to extend, rather than totally revise, existing health care benefits for its employees – including Karen, whose medical coverage I am under. I should have known this would be the time God might choose.

The hour was 2:30 p.m., after Karen and I had returned home from church at Harvest Bible Chapel. Ironically, my phone rang just as I was sitting down to a delightful home-cooked lunch, and I opted to let it go to voicemail.

Moments later, it rang again. Now I'm getting a bit peevish. "Which one of my idiot friends can't figure out that if I don't pick up the phone, I don't want to talk right now?" I carped, my thoughts in the form of a mutter.

The ringing eventually ended on that call, too. Then Karen's cell phone sprang to life. She at least had the motivation to get up and look at the number.

"Do we know anyone in the 314 area code?" she asked.

"That's St. Louis," I said. Home of Barnes-Jewish Hospital, my kidney transplant headquarters.

My blood ran cold.

She put the phone on speaker and we talked to a very nice transplant coordinator named Trish. She said a potential kidney donor match had been located for me: a 54-year-old woman (whoo-HOO! Younger than me!) who died within the past 24 hours and is a solid blood and tissue match.

That's the way it often is in the transplant biz, tragically. Someone's got to die for the gift of life to be bestowed.

The hangup in this case: no one knows anything about the lady's medical history.

Surgeons will perform a biopsy on the kidney to see if there's anything wrong with it internally, but until the results of that test come back and doctors are satisfied that it's damage- and disease-free, we're in a bit of limbo. What's more, because of the questionable origin of the organ, I'm told I can say "No, I don't think so" right until they wheel me into the OR without penalty of losing my place on the donor list.

Pressure? What pressure?

It isn't that I'm not thrilled about the prospect of a kidney transplant, although on the three-hour drive to St. Louis I could feel myself growing quiet and sullen. The closer we got to the Gateway Arch, the harder it was for me to catch my breath. At one point I thought I was hyperventilating.

It's hard to explain. As much as I try to put my faith in God for all things, I think it was just the fear of the unknown that was sending my mind into the funk tank. I'm doing all right on Peritoneal Dialysis – better than all right, actually, I'm doing great – and even though I may not stay that way forever and a transplant is far and away the best alternative long term, I always have had a very tough time adjusting to change.

It's amazing to me how many questions and "what ifs," serious and silly, come to mind at a time like this:

What if there are complications in the surgery?

What if my body rejects this lady's little kidney?

Will I miss dialysis?

What will I do with all that extra time and medical supplies once I'm off dialysis?

How will I respond to the anti-rejection drugs?

Will I ever be able to eat sushi, or raw anything, again for fear of infection?

Will I have to wear a mask in public?

You can drive yourself cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs if you let your mind run free with all those "what ifs." Enough already. I'm much calmer now. Once we got to the hospital, got checked in and they started running diagnostic tests on me, I felt much better. Whatever's going to happen now is going to happen. It never was in my hands in the first place.

Right after my EKG was completed, out of the blue, a member of the church I belong to 180 miles away strolled into my hospital room. Dick Elder's wife, Kathy, is also a patient in this massive medical complex – and, as it turns out, in the room one floor above mine.

Small world, schmall world: you'll never convince me that's a coincidence.

Then the hospital technician, as she was drawing my blood, suddenly began softly praying aloud for my health and safety. "If it's for you, it's going to happen," she said, laying a hand on my wrist. "The Lord knows what's best for you. We ask you, dear Lord, to put this man's health in your hands."

Powerful stuff, this kidney transplant. Amen.

Parking With the Pastor

I have returned, tired but inspired, from "Harvest University," an intense three-day conference in Elgin, Ill. It was hosted by Harvest Bible Chapel, the exploding string of Bible-based churches worldwide that has a branch in Decatur, Ill., which I am proud to attend.

At a Harvest church, everybody works in service to God's glory; I am a member of the Hospitality Team at Decatur, and in between the University's exhilarating worship services I took workshop courses designed to help me do what I do better.

The church was founded in 1988 by Pastor James MacDonald, a simply amazing man of God. Funny yet fearless, passionate and unapologetic, he is one of the finest Biblical scholars and ministers it has been my privilege to hear.

I'm always thrilled to see him preach in person, so I was anxious to get from the hotel where 17 of my fellow Decatur parishioners and I were staying over to Harvest Elgin for the final day of classes and Pastor MacDonald's closing sermon. Because we all had checked out of the hotel and were going our separate ways at the end of the conference, I was driving by myself.

About a quarter-mile from the church, I found myself stuck alongside a bald, burly biker in a black leather vest who was slowly putt-putt-putting his Harley in the right-hand turn lane leading to the entrance. "This guy can't possibly be going to Harvest University!" I grumbled. "What the heck is he doing in my way?"

I had the option of either slowing waaaay down and slipping in behind the motorcycle or hitting the accelerator, gunning it a bit and zipping in front of him.

Did I mention that I drive a 2011 Camaro?

There was no option. I stepped on the gas, made a sharp right and pulled in front of the biker. "That's more like it!" I grinned.

I looked in my rear-view mirror to make sure I hadn't cut him off too severely. "Man, does that face looks familiar," thought I.

Then I took a closer look. The joy-riding biker was none other than...Pastor James MacDonald.

Oh, Lord.

Scanning his eyes in the mirror for any trace of anger, I felt relieved that (a) he seemed OK and (b) thankfully no one from my church witnessed my moment of sheer idiocy.

I was half right. The moment I opened my door after parking in the Harvest lot, my pastor in Decatur, Tony Caffey, was standing next to my car. "You know you almost ran over the founder of our church?" he asked.

I heard the raucous laughter of my fellow Harvest Decaturites in the background.

Well, perhaps an apology might be in order.

As I entered the lobby I spotted MacDonald – he's a hard man to miss, especially in a black leather vest – surrounded by members of my church. I walked over and shook his hand.

      A grinning Pastor James MacDonald with Harvest Decatur attendee Lori Nelson, apparently uninjured.

"I'm really sorry about cutting you off," I said.

"That was you? In the Camaro?"

I nodded sheepishly.

"Man, I couldn't help but check out that car! That is one sweet ride!"

Saved by the sports car.

As we later learned, MacDonald was dressed as he was because the church was giving a new Harley to assistant senior pastor Rick Donald for his decades of faithful service to the church, and MacDonald actually rode the bike into the sanctuary to present it to him. I don't think that was the bike he was riding into the parking lot, but I can't be sure. Had I cut my steering wheel a split-second sooner, I might have ruined a thoughtful, expensive gift and derailed a marvelous closing sermon from MacDonald. Harvest Holy Enemy No. 1.

The takeaway for me that day? God's grace even extends to impulsive drivers. And you can't judge a biker by his "vest"-ments.