It was the summer of 2003. She and Joe are starting to get serious after a long on-again, off-again friendship. They are curled up on the couch in her apartment, depressed because she just learned that the kidney her eldest sister donated three years ago is failing.
Bernardine (called Dine by her friends) confides in Joe: She says, “She can’t take care of herself because she’s afraid of getting sick.” She works as an independent social policy consultant, and her health insurance premiums are astronomical.
Joe said, “I have insurance.”
Wow. Dain wonders if that’s how Joe proposed…marriage? Joe grinned and shrugged, “Sure.”
A few months later, in April 2004, Joe and Dine were married under a large tree in Lake Tahoe. “He agreed to be our witness, and two geese were happily cawing in the background,” Dine wrote.
As expected, Joe. If you only know love stories from watching Lifetime or Hallmark, you’ve probably never met a man like Joe. He doesn’t appear in “Waiting to Exhale” or any of Tyler Perry’s films. This is not fiction or fake, it is real. He’s not the type to rescue his sick wife. He doesn’t even have to vow to follow the Diné “in sickness or in health.” That’s him. That’s what he’s doing.
Shortly after they started dating, it became clear that Dain would eventually need another kidney transplant. The problem was that Joe’s blood type and tissue type did not match her blood type and tissue type.
While considering their options, they learned about Johns Hopkins Hospital’s incompatible kidney transplant program. How it works: If Joe donates a kidney, doctors will find a compatible recipient and in return, a kidney that is compatible with Dine will be found.
When Joe agreed to the kidney exchange, they were in bed in a dark room.
“Deep down, I knew Joe would react that way,” Dine wrote. “Still, I felt so relieved to hear his words. I closed my eyes. How could I respond to such goodwill? Joe was always there for me. As someone who has cared for himself for as long as he did, I sometimes had a hard time accepting the goodness in Joe. But it just kept going.”
Dine had been diagnosed with a type of kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) in 1984. There is no known cause or cure. She was 33 years old. Born to working-class parents in South Philadelphia, she graduated from the Philadelphia School for Girls in 1969 and left home at age 19, pregnant. She stayed with her then-boyfriend’s parents for a while, and then she started raising her son while working. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Temple University. She got a good job with a chance for her promotion, but she then found out she had a kidney disease that threatened her life, and her name was almost unpronounceable.
The condition remained stable for nearly 10 years. By 1994, her medical exams began to show signs of kidney failure, and by 1999, she needed a kidney transplant. Fortunately, her eldest sister Alice was a match and she agreed to the procedure.
However, after 3.5 years, FSGS developed in the transplanted kidney. Before the kidney exchange deal for Joe’s kidney materialized, Daines began dialysis at Fresenius Kidney Care DuPont Circle. The function of the kidneys is to remove waste products from the blood and produce urine. Dialysis removes waste products and excess fluid from the blood when the kidneys are not functioning properly.
Joe took Diné to four-hour appointments three times a week.
At every dialysis center she visited, whether in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Detroit or Martha’s Vineyard, the patients were usually black. Like her, many are poor, homeless, addicted to drugs and alcohol, blind, amputated, tired and often in pain. I was there. High blood pressure and diabetes are the most common causes of kidney disease.
In the book, Dine explains: At first, she resented being among the dialysis patients. Because her dialysis patients reminded her of the poverty she had worked so hard to escape.. But after that, she began to see them as “her own people.” How race united them in the fight against racial disparities in health-related issues.
At Saturday’s book reading on Politics and Prose, a white woman in the audience stood up to comment.
“I want you to know that I am one of your people, too,” she said. Dine knew the woman and she introduced him. She was Judy Payne, the donor of the kidney Dine received in exchange for Joe’s kidney. The audience held their breath.
Kidney recipients can contact their donors to express their gratitude. Dine did so shortly after her transplant, and she and Judy have been close friends ever since. Payne, who lives in New Hampshire, later told me: What I got in return was the gift of friendship. ”
The recipient of Joe’s kidney will remain anonymous. And Joe is okay with that. “I just wanted to help Diné,” he told me.
In the book, Dine describes trips she took with Joe to Paris, Nice, Madrid and London to forget about upcoming surgeries. One day she asked him, “Why do croissants and Perriers taste better in France than in America?”
Joe replied, “We’re in France, baby.”
Who would have expected federal insiders to be so moderate?
Dine had come to the correct conclusion about black dialysis patients. They were her people. But she also has access to things many people don’t want, including adequate health insurance, the means to make lifestyle changes, and access to the best doctors and altruistic organ donors like her sisters Alice and Judy. He was also aware that he had advantages that would have killed him.
Not to mention the support system of solid people like Joe.
Dine said she wrote the book to raise awareness about kidney disease and the needs of the less fortunate among us. And the love story is worth reading.
