Wicked Thing

This is the October 2018 edition of this post, and hopefully the final version.

Dessie is now ten years old. Yay!! For the last two years, she’s held steady at 22% total kidney function, in Stage Four Chronic Kidney Disease. At her last nephrologist visit, her creatinine has gone up. She says she’s tired all the time.

We think she’s tipping over to Stage 5 CKD/End Stage Renal Disease. Her next visit to the nephrologist is in December, and I’m expecting to get the diagnosis then. If not, great! But I’m not hopeful.

I think we’ll need to make another trip to Seattle Chikdren’s Hospital then, so they can run their own labs and make her active on the deceased donor transplant list. Normally, I’ve been told by them, once a child is active on the last, they typically receive a donor kidney within six months to a year. So I think 2019 will be her year of the transplant. Possibly dialysis before then — I know her local nephrologist wants to avoid it if we can.

The transplant itself requires we stay in Seattle for three to four months, with frequent follow ups afterwards. (First every month, then every two months, then every three months.). Each trip by car takes 6.5-8 hours each way, and usually two tanks of gas. Special Mobilty Services can help with gas, and lodging, if we can give them two weeks notice.

The transplant will be a journey in every sense of the word. I would love it if this could be fully funded before then.

If you have a spare kidney and want to try to be her living donor, here’s the Donors need to between 21-45, in reasonably good health, and O+ blood type. No smoking or drinking alcohol, not even occasionally. If this is something you’re interested, please contact the University of Washington’s living donor program at 206-598-3627, and mention you’re interested in donating to Dessie McAdams. That begins the process.

I’m a single mom, with three kids. To deal with my hideous finances which have put us in the negative regularly since May of 2017, to get us back on our feet, we are moving in with my mother for at least the next year. Perhaps longer; she hasn’t put a deadline on it. I think I’m going to have to declare bankruptcy to get our from under, which will tank my already bad credit score. So I’m not sure of our prospects afterwards; if I could, I’d rather buy a place than rent, but even renting will be hard, with bad credit and high rents.

In the most immediate future, we need about $300-500 through October to either rent a dumpster or hire a junk hauling service to clear out the backyard, garage, and basement. There’s a lot of heavy stuff my mom and I can’t handle.

This move to my mom’s also gets us away from my ex and his family, and Imbin the process of getting the parenting agreement modified to supervised visitation. He molested Dessie, by her account, sometime while we were married, around when she was 4-5. (I reported it to CPS and the police as soon as I learned of this, but as it was some years after it occurred, there was no evidence and they did nothing).

He’s also verbally and emotionally abused all of us.

His family may decide to bring in a lawyer for him with the requested change in parenting plan; I don’t know.

I guess what I’m saying is, once we move we’ll be doing better than we have in a long while. But help is still needed. A miracle, even, if it could be so, to get us through her transplant and from there to a safe place to live independently. Please get this fully funded (or more) as soon as possible, if it can be done.

If you don’t want to use the GoFundMe, that’s fine. We also have

PayPal.me/kerryren

Venmo@KerryRen

SquareCash $KerryRen

And CirclePay at [email protected]

If using these, please let me know who you are and if you’d like to be publicly thanked. Not all the apps are conducive to interactions, I’ve noticed.

We are incredibly grateful for all the help we’ve received through tumblr so far. You guys have literally helped keep us alive.

If you can’t donate, don’t worry about it. If you don’t want to, don’t bother me about it. Boosts and reblogs still help, though!

Here, have a cute pic of Dessie with a plush kidney a mutual sent her!

This is still happening

This is still happening

Tireless Caregivers have a hard time setting limits, feel guilty when they are not caregiving, and are particularly sensitive to being perceived as selfish, unkind, or unloving. 

Bring “nice” and taking care of others is central to their identity and sense of self-worth. TCs are thus very desirable to narcissists, since both partners will wind up agreeing that the narcissist’s needs are the more important ones in the relationship.

How Narcissists Provide “Job Security” for Tireless Caregivers

The downside of this combination of strengths and vulnerabilities is that it makes Tireless Caregivers ripe for attracting self-centered people. 

So, why do TCs so often choose to be with, and stay with, self-centered people, instead of finding partners and friends who are just as compassionate and caring as the TCs themselves?

Being with someone who needs a steady stream of validation, attention, and care provides the Tireless Caregiver with a type of “job security”: It ensures the TC will remain needed, and thus have an important role.

Self-absorbed people set the stage for TCs to keep doing those things they do really well.

The self-absorbed are uncannily good at knowing how to displace blame and responsibility onto guilt-prone TCs who readily take on the responsibility.

When one person is the obvious “bad guy” – selfish, unreliable, unfaithful, and so forth — it allows the Tireless Caregiver to remain the “good guy” in comparison.

Familiar relationship patterns are like the well-worn grooves in the road – it takes a lot of energy – at least for a while – to create a new path.