My cousin called me the other day to tell me that the transplant center in Baltimore had declared us a match. I could accept her kidney.

Her mother had donated a kidney to my mother. So this was keeping with a sort of tradition.

It is difficult to explain how feels to be told that you are now significantly less likely to die in the next six months. That, some day soon – perhaps in as little as a month – you will feel better in ways you can’t even understand right now, because it’s been so long since you weren’t feeling the constant ache, fatigue, and pains of a body slowly poisoning itself.

In the movies or books, poison moves swiftly. I don’t remember the context, but my friend Ryan, back in 1995, assured me that, no, being poisoned is actually an exceedingly painful way to die. Well, I can now vouch for that truth.

Of course, I haven’t died. Not yet. And I may not now for many years.