This is a long post. In the text, there are a number of limiting factors. Please read it entirely before responding or contacting me as I don't want to raise anyone's hopes unnecessarily. Thanks in advance.
My name is Jamil and I have been thinking about this for three years, so please understand that I am long since past the "just putting out feelers" stage. I've been there. I've had the doubts and weighed the options. In the end, I'm doing this. I have my reasons, as you'll soon learn, some of which you may agree with and some of which you may not. Ultimately though, they're my reasons and I'm OK with them. That's what's important.
I am a sailor, a seaman, a shipwright, a fisherman, a "whomever you can think of" who spends most of his time on boats and on the ocean. From the waters of the Caribbean to the Bering Sea, Pacific to Atlantic, Panama to the Arctic Circle.
Three years ago I was on a cod fishing boat in the Aleutian Islands. I spent three months at sea with eleven other guys. In that kind of situation, you become like family. You spend 24 hours a day living, eating, sleeping, laughing, working, and battling to survive next to the same people. War is the only environment I can think of that forges any kind of bond like that between men. My point is, the eleven men on board, whom I may never have been friends with on land, were like brothers to me.
It was a hard season. The weak link in the chain was the engineer. He faced a never ending series of problems with the refrigeration system and never could get it functioning properly. Without refrigeration, the fish spoil and we don't make any money, so it's a big deal.
Two months into the season, with the refrigeration system working at about 40%, the crew was near mutiny. Rightly or wrongly, the engineer was cause of... and the focal point for our problematic season. Ultimately, the engineer walked off the boat on a little, sparsely inhabited island at the end of the Aleutian chain. Getting home was his own problem. He was not missed.
For the remaining weeks of the season, I assumed the engineer's role. Mostly shifting fuel from one tank to another to keep the boat riding level, checking oil, pumping the bilge, and other important, but simple tasks.
In those last few weeks of the season, everything came together. The captain found the motherlode of cod and we were filling up the boat as fast as we could. Whether from dumb luck, innate mechanical ability, or because I accidentally did something right, we got the freezer working well enough to keep the fish cold.
On the 3 day passage back to Dutch Harbor to unload, the crew, my crewmates, my brothers, all clapped me on the back for "stepping up" and "keeping us going". I can't begin to tell you how proud I was.
When we got back to Dutch Harbor, the captain took us all out for drinks. For the official toast, the captain looked at me and said "Thank you. I'll bet your father is proud of you." It was possibly the nicest compliment a man can give another man. It was, without a doubt, the single proudest moment of my life. 38 years of life.
Then the honeymoon was over.
The next season was starting in two weeks. Everyone was flying home the next day and coming back a week later. Everyone except me. As the engineer, it was my job to make sure everything was mechanically ready and safe for the next season. I spent the next week changing oils, greasing fittings, reading manuals about equipment I'd never seen (A fuel water centrifuge? Sure, everyone's got one those lying around. A desalinator with a ceramic membrane? No problem).
After a week, I realized I was in totally over my head. I didn't know half of the stuff I needed to know to do the job. I called the captain and the owner of the boat. I told them I wasn't qualified and didn't want the job. It wasn't safe with me as the engineer.
They both told me they had faith in me. They both said they would help out and engineering would be a team. In the end, I told them that the only way they're going to hire a qualified engineer is if I'm not there. So I quit.
I went back to Seattle and looked for the next boat.
I found it. A two month delivery of a 56' sailing yacht from Southern California to Lima, Peru. We would stop in Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and finish in Peru.
The owner of the fishing boat called me the same day I found the delivery job. "Would you be interested in flying up to Dutch and rejoining the boat?" he asked me. "We've hired a new engineer and your job would be to learn from him and help us fish at the same time." They still wanted me to be the engineer down the road.
I thought about it for half a second. On one hand, there was a two month sail through Central America on a luxury yacht, on the other hand, there was three more months of breaking ice off the frozen bow of the boat in 20' seas in winter. I chose the sunny one.
The trip to Peru was fine. It took two months and I flew back to Seattle. The Katmai was still fishing, but was on their last trip of the season. I was going to sheepishly ask the captain if I could rejoin the crew.
On October 22nd, heavy with a full load of cod, the Katmai got stuck in the middle of a storm as they were crossing Amchitka Pass, a horrible body of water where the Pacific Ocean feeds the Bering Sea. When the wind is blowing against the tide, the waves get incredibly steep, incredibly big, and incredibly close together. It's what's known as a washing machine. Waves hit you from all directions and any one of them hitting you broadside can roll you over.
That's what happened.
The Katmai went down at about 2:00 a.m. of October 23rd after taking on water and then getting rolled. Of the eleven on board, 10 made it to the liferafts. Bob, the engineer, didn't. When everyone was putting on survival suits, Bob went down to the engine room to try to save the ship.
That was the last time anyone saw Bob.
The remaining ten men launched two liferafts. My friends Scooter (Glenn) and Fuli and and a greenhorn on his first fishing trip, were in the one that never fully inflated. The Coast Guard found their bodies the next day.
Seven men made it into the other liferaft. The captain, the deck boss whose name is Tubby, my friends Cedric and Carlos, and three greenhorns, Ryan, Josh, and Adam.
When they got into the raft, Carlos could here the screams coming from Scooter and Fuli in the other raft. "I'm going to go check on them," Carlos said in the darkness. Then he slipped into the water and started swimming to their voices.
Carlos was never found.
The canopy of the remaining raft was torn and acting like a sail. It ultimately drown them if they didn't cut it loose. Cedric knew the only way to do that would be to strip his survival suit down to the waist so he could handle the knife. After cutting the canopy free, a wave upended the liferaft before Cedric could get his suit back on.
The Coast Guard spotted Cedric's body the next day.
Josh was complaining about the cold and looked near freezing. No one in the raft knew that Josh's survival suit had been punctured during the abandon ship. When the liferaft was upended by another wave, Josh never made it back to the raft.
For the next 19 hours, four men in a liferaft weathered 100 mph winds, the freezing Bering Sea, and 25' crashing waves. By all accounts, they were launched from... and had to swim back to the liferaft between 30 and 50 times.
Of the eleven on board, seven died that night.
If you haven't yet figured out what my motivation is, I'll spell it out. If I were on that boat, maybe nothing would have changed except for one more fatality, maybe everything would have changed and we'd all be sitting at the bar toasting me for saving the day again.
I don't know. I'll never know.
All I'm left with are questions and uncertainties.
For the last three years, I went through the whole grieving process. I blamed myself, I became self destructive, I lived with a horrible depression. Then that evolved into plain sadness. I missed my friends. Then somewhere along the journey, I learned to accept it. It's still sad, I still don't have any of the answers, I still miss them, but I'm alive.
So yes, this is partly rooted in guilt, partly in some cathartic personal atonement for letting my friends down when they needed me, but also in living, in life, in celebration.
I first discovered LDO two+ years ago when I was looking for some action to take, some path to absolution. I never followed up on it because, well, because I just didn't. I didn't know if I would regret it somehow. But the thought never really left my mind. It sat there in a corner and began to take shape.
Now, three years and two months later, my life is considerably different. I live on a farm and my biggest concern is whether or not the cows will get out again. There's no more life and death factors in my day to day existence. I'm not wracked by grief, or unable to function. I function very well, thank you. I took up astronomy. I built some furniture. I met a girl. I became a living person again.
It would have been the wrong time to donate a kidney two years ago. I don't believe the same is true today. So now I'm ready.
Here are the particulars of my offer:
Chances are, you and I are not a match, whether it's blood type, antigens, or any other limiting factor, the odds of us being a match are slim. So I propose the paired donation route.
I would like to find someone in the Pacific Northwest who needs a kidney. This person and I would enter a paired donation program to try and find a more suitable donor (though, if we were a match, great!).
You don't have to be Gandhi or Mother Theresa. I don't need or want you to try and convince me emotionally to "pick" you. It's not my place to judge who is worthy. You all are. My heart breaks for each and every one of the people on this site who need a transplant for themselves or their loved ones.
You don't need to be rich or "buy" my kidney, because it's a gift. A gift I give both solemnly and for keeps. But you do need to be able to cover all the costs. Otherwise, it's just not feasible.
You need to be local (or be willing to let me camp in your back yard...and live in Tahiti), because I just can't disappear for several months (again, unless you live in Tahiti...possibly... if you're willing to wear a coconut bikini).
So that's it: 1. Be local. 2. Be insured. 3. Be human. 4. Be okay with the Paired Donation route. (5. Be Tahitian).
Thank you for taking the time to read this whole thing. I know this is about you and not about me, but it's kind of about me too. My goals are not purely altruistic, along with a scar and the good feelings, I also get an ounce of redemption.
If you're interested, get in touch with me.
Topic: Serious Donor in Seattle (Read 7008 times)