My kidney transplant and Jeff’s donor transplant surgeries were last October. Not long after, we started talking about taking a road trip to Chicago to visit a mutual friend and his family. What began as an idea for a 6‑month post‑transplant milestone celebration eventually landed on June 26th – July 2nd, a timeframe that was less like stars aligning in our schedules and more like something we had been anticipating for months.
Our road trip milestone idea grew into building a full ‘entourage’. Our mutual friend Chris joined us on the road trip, along with a few of Jeff’s friends from his church who had prayed for both of us throughout our kidney journey. Their presence felt like part of the celebration rather than a roster of dudes I hadn’t met. We were vacation-bound and ready to stay at an extra-large house my friend John is investing in, and packed the van like five guys packing for a trip while others flew.
In the end, a total of nine of us made up the ManVenture crew. Not everyone could stay the whole time, but we made the most of the days we had together. Those around at different times ate well, sailed Lake Michigan, visited more than one museum, watched the White Sox dominate the Royals, watched more FIFA than I’ve ever watched in my life, and had a big-screen home theater movie experience. And much more. We even had Man(o)lympics, which turned into made-up games and questionable rules made up on the spot around tennis, pool, golf, football, basketball, curling with a basketball and no broom, and even a ‘lazy Susan’ ended up as an event, somehow.
This marked the first vacation I had taken in a while, since before kidney dialysis in mid-2024. Sure, my trip to Colorado for a wedding last October before the transplant was a mini-vacation, but I had to drag my dialysis machine and solution with me.
This time, there wasn’t a dialysis machine to load into the back of Jeff’s van. There wasn’t a U-Haul trailer hitched up to carry what used to keep my kidney function stable. The difference showed up in the packing. Before the transplant, a road trip meant calculating dialysis solution for every night and day, hoping an outlet in my room worked wherever I stayed. Last week, I packed a single duffel bag of medicine and diabetic supplies, a suitcase, and a backpack of electronics, and that was enough.
No dialysis machine riding shotgun like an uninvited guest. No midday naps forced by exhaustion. I didn’t even nap once on this trip. (Okay, maybe one, but only because it was a vacation, not because my body still demanded it.) I walked around the house just because I could, with no destination in mind. At the museum, I covered every floor and every exhibit on my own two feet, moving at my own pace without doing the usual math on how much energy I had left.
Here is the thing about a ManVenture with Jeff, specifically. He is not just a friend on the roster. He is the guy who stepped into the donor testing process, asked hard questions, prayed his way through a decision most people never make, and set a cross-match in motion that ended with a stranger’s kidney becoming mine. Walking through Chicago next to him, free of machines, a hitched trailer full of supplies, or the weight of medical logistics. We were living inside an answer to something we both prayed about for a long time, which was that this transplant journey would work out well for both of us.
Because of that, I came home from Chicago the way a good trip makes one tired. Sore feet. Full of inside jokes I will not be explaining here. What I did not come home with was the exhaustion that used to trail behind every trip as if it had booked its own seat.
And best of all, no reminders of how kidney dialysis used to limit me.
What I carried home instead was something simple. I had lived the kind of trip I only heard other people describe, the kind I wondered for more than a year if I would ever experience again.
And now I have. I am already… ready to go on vacation again.
So, when a future trip is discussed, I hope it includes Jeff, my donor, Jeff’s recipient, and me. That will be its own kind of celebration.
Related Posts:
Untethered: My First Flight Since Kidney Dialysis
Living Donor Match – Answered Prayers
Life After My Kidney Transplant
Fantastic !!!! LM
❤️ I love this! I can’t wait for my turn!!