I'm sitting in the ICU unit at Seton Hospital. Three feet from me, my beloved wife Karen lies in a deep coma with, if we can believe the doctors, no chance of recovery. My precious wife of 16 years fell ill at 6:00 pm on July 1, 2009. By 4:00 am the next morning the only thing she could do on her own is breathe. This is about the worst day of my life. But, this isn't about me.

The staff of the hospital is kind and thoughtful but they all know this one is not going to have a good outcome. They've been subtlely telling us this all day. It has finally hit me at about 2:00 pm. Of the second day. Simply put, Karen suffered a serious bleeding event in her brain. The Docs know what it is but do not know why it happened exactly or how to fix it. We don't ask and they don't tell us about the technicalities of this horrendous event. "Prospects for a good outcome are poor" is about as specific as it gets.

One Doc gives us a list of possible causes for the bleeding including:

The toxicity of immunosuppressant drugs over time. (Karen had been on immunosuppressant drugs since 1990).

Damage to vascular systems from the terrible disease named diabetes. (Karen was diabetic starting at age 11).

The imperfect filtration process involved with dialysis. (Karen started dialysis treatments again in 2006).

These possible causes of death make sense. In a way they are reassuring because they help to make some sense of why Karen had a stroke and perhaps help us move toward accepting Karen's untimely death.

Okay, I accept what happened. I'll accept that some breakdown in the way Karen's body should function caused this horrible thing to happen. My problem is why it had to happen to such a wonderful special person. Karen didn't get her horn tooted very much so here are some facts about my girl.

Karen's personal motto was "Focus on others, not myself". That's the way she lived her life.

Karen was always working in the shipping department of her office, assembling little packages of stuff to send to her family in Arkansas. It could be as simple as some recipes she had copied off the internet or material about Nome Alaska where her sister is located. She made it a point to call her mother daily for many years. Her mother died in November of last year. Now Karen will be with her in heaven.

Karen was involved in a kidney-pancreas email support group for as long as there have been such groups. She provided advice, information, guidance and humor for many people who were waiting for a transplant, had just received or just lost a transplant or knew somebody in that situation. I would hear her at the computer for hours passing along information and commiseration. A lot of the problems that transplant patients encounter were not unfamiliar to Karen.

Did I mention Karen's sense of Humor? Karen and I both had lots of laughs at the way some people treat blind people as if we are total idiots. For example, some people speak loud around blind people thinking that we are deaf as well as blind and probably a little stupid as well. When Karen encountered such a "sighted chauvinist" she would pound her white cane on the floor and speak loudly in a retarded voice thus showing the ridiculousness of the speaker's attitude.

My most favorite thing about Karen was her dogged persistence. You must understand that being on dialysis is a very tiring and debilitating life style. Most dialysis patients are treated three times a week and spend the rest of the week recovering. Karen was in determined pursuit of a new kidney, her original transplanted kidney failed in 2006. From that time on, she never gave up the quest to get a new kidney, despite her physical frailties and the bureaucratic obstacles she ran into along the way. She had the attitude that going to dialysis treatments three times a week was her part time job and just dealt with it. Meanwhile she was on the phone to Scott and White in Temple lobbying to get listed there for a kidney. They required that she have surgery, new testing as well as track down medical records all over town in order to get on the waiting list. She did not let this stop her efforts to get listed and in the end she prevailed. At the time of her death she was high on their list to get a new organ.

Sadly, her death came on July 03 at Seton ICU at 10:30 a.m. before she could get the new transplant. It is irony indeed because a new kidney would have solved several of Karen's problems and likely prolonged her life. I'm so proud of her fight to the end to get re-transplanted. . In her quiet way Karen was as gutsy as anyone I know. I believe that if Karen could come on your television and bring you a message, it would be to consider giving a friend in need a kidney.

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