Three Beautiful Things 04-11-2024: Transplant Update -- Another "No Go", No Fasting! Great Stir Fry, *Bundyville*

1. I admit it. 

These kidney transplant updates are dizzying.

Here's the latest.

On Wednesday evening, around 8:00, one of the transplant coordinators called me to ask me the initial screening questions because another donor was, as it turned out, near death. I misunderstood this initial call. I thought he said this was not a case where to donor was brain dead but hadn't met the criteria to be declared legally deceased. 

Twenty-four hours passed. 

I texted the transplant coordinator who called me Wednesday evening. 

He was off duty, but let his colleague, Patricia, know that I was seeking an update.

Patricia and I have talked before and she straighten out my misunderstanding. 

She told me that the donor had just gone into the operating room where life support would be removed. 

I knew what this meant. 

For the donor's donated organs to be viable, the donor had to meet the death criteria within a certain time frame. 

That didn't happen. 

Patricia called me shortly after 10:00 to report that the situation was a "no go".

So, after twenty-six hours of calmly waiting, I could go to bed knowing that a transplant was not happening now and that I have no idea when the next call will come. 

I accept that. 

2. This was my third go around in the last week or so with news that a kidney was potentially available. 

When I received the first two calls, the next call I got was to begin fasting. 

Because of the time that passed before the donor went off of life support, on this go around, I was never instructed to fast.

So, late this afternoon, I chopped vegetables, took out tofu I had drained the water from, made a pot of brown rice, and made a sauce and fixed a delicious stir fry dinner for Debbie and me, a dinner I had been thinking about for a couple of days. It was even better than I had imagined. 

3. I think Leah Sottile is a terrific writer and creator of podcasts. I read her book, When the Moon Turns to Blood, about Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell and the murder of two of her children. Lori Vallow has been found guilty of the murders and Chad Daybell's trial started this week. 

With this in mind, Debbie and I decided to listen to Leah Sottile's podcast on the Bundy family called Bundyville. Tonight we listened to her accounting of the 2014 standoff near Bunkerville, NV and the occupation, a couple years later, of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. 

These stories, of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell and of the Bundy family, are connected by the out of the mainstream, apocalyptic Mormon beliefs they all hold and put into practice.