4:45 pm 1/11/11

I was standing in my kitchen trying to cook yet another renal friendly meal. Marty was sitting in a chair at the dining room table, Conner was being Conner and Elizabeth was  standing by the table talking to her Daddy. The day had started with a dialysis treatment at 7 am. We were tired and weary.

We had just gotten home from yet another Nephrologist appointment where we had heard discouraging labs and high blood pressures. It was just another battle weary day until my phone rang......

It was a 650 area code and my heart skipped a beat. I told Marty, " It's Stanford" and gave him the phone. Elizabeth started jumping up and down, " I knew it, I knew it" and Marty starts saying, " Okay, uh huh, yes, here let me give my wife the phone"

He gives me the phone and the call drops! Oh NO! he says, " That was Stanford and they have a offer" immediately the phone rang back and the nurse started asking me a million questions and my heart started racing. This was "THE CALL" not a false warning it was " THE CALL".

I hung up the phone and we all started crying and praying together. I called my back up sitters because my planned sitters couldn't sit. My back up sitters couldn't do it either. So I called my best friend Heather and she agreed to take the kids, while another would take them while she worked the next day until my Mom could get here.

We started throwing clothes and things in a bag. We had to take dialysis treatments with us and actually had to skip a treatment to go. Stanford said, " How soon can you be here?" I said, " We can leave in a hour" which was met by dead silence on the other line. I said, " We will leave in 45 minutes" and the nurse said, "That's perfect".

We literally shoved the kids out the garage door into Heather's car and it was so crazed we didn't even get to kiss them goodbye. I plugged in my headset and started calling people. I called my friend Di to update my Twitter friends, I called my friend Ruth to update our prayer group and she literally started screaming and fell to the floor in praise.

One of my greatest fears is that when we got " The Call" it would be foggy. We had been in a accident on the way to Stanford in the Tule Fog before. God heared my prayer and the road was crystal clear all the way to Stanford. I remember at one point Marty was talking to our friend Keith and it rained a bit. Other than that I drove shaking and fearful all 333 miles to Stanford.

We were scared, we truly believed we would get there and be told no. We didn't really believe it was going to happen. We were put into a room and the parade of doctors began. Lots of questions from Nephrologists and surgeons. We met Dr.G for the first time that night. They hooked Marty up to the evil machine one last time. I sat on a cot with my laptop in my lap and updated everyone. We barely slept that night with the evil machine going off all night. Which was funny since we had lost many nights of sleep to that machine before.

In one instant, with one phone call our life was forever changed. Hard to believe it has been one year already, time has flown by with so many good things that have come since that day. It really was our lucky day and we couldn't fully see that until now.

I got up this morning, dragging out of bed, not wanting to work out or be up. During my bible study time it hit me, like a ton of bricks. One year ago today, I couldn't even fathom life today. I would have been getting up to do dialysis instead.

As I got on the treadmill, I vacilliated between joy and grief for the donor family. I thought about how our lives were switched now. It's really hard to think of and something I will never fully wrap my mind around. All we can do it live our life in honor of their child and grateful for their gift.

Simply put, a random, selfless act of kindness changed our lives for the better. My challenge and my challenge to you today is to Pay it forward.