My report on competing in the 2017 World Transplant Games
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
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All around the world, thousands of people are alive thanks to organ and tissue transplants. The world transplant games brings them together to celebrate. DW reporter Chi Dumba, who has had successful kidney transplants himself, attended this year's games in Malaga. DW I'm not supposed to be here today. No, really, I'm not. I shouldn't even be talking to you. I don't mean this in the I snuck past security to blabber nonsense that your way. I mean, I should be in the graveyard, but with four kidneys from four different people here I am at the 2017 World Transplant Games in Malaga, Spain. But more on that later. First, let me give you the back story on how I became a kidney collector. Well, this isn't a hobby. I don't carry a box with me everywhere I go asking people to yank out a vital organ. It involves a lot of pain. Trust and look. E was born with posterior urethral valves, a problem involving the bladder and prostate that occurs in about one in every 10,000 male births. Normally, it's okay. It's fixed with a few meds, but I was special just a few days after I was born, I was put in the back of an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. I stayed there for much of my life. For the next few years. When I was one, my red kidney was taken out. I don't remember why, obviously, but out of came. But that was not going to be enough to keep me alive. I needed a kidney and my father matched. But this was 1994 and it was not certain this kidney would even fit in my small, weak toddler frame, let alone work. But it had to be done and everything went wrong. My mother remembers very clearly for May, your lungs were flooded, so it took a long time to dry them out, in which time they needed to. Also, Dr Kidney, you had a fever. So some infection somewhere. Just, uh, not enough oxygen to the brain, because you are over breathing the respirator, just many just a cascade of things. My memory started to kick in a little after my first transplant. My brother and I would look at fish tanks in Johns Hopkins Hospital while my mom would set everything up for another transplant. after the first one failed. Watching those gentle colors swim around after another day in the hospital was one of the few moments I knew I wouldn't be in pain, and I really cherished all those moments. I had tubes in my stomach and chest. At this point, the tube of my stomach was for medicine that was too strong for me to take orally, and the two of my chest was too easily take blood out to test. There was just so much medicine and so much testing in those days too much. My mother was a match for organ donation and gave me a kidney when I was four. Two years after my first transplant failed, her kidney brought me back to life. Ah, third chance at life before I enter kindergarten. This time everything went right and I was in and out in a week after leaving the hospital. Though transplants don't magically keep working, there's mountains of medicine that you have to take that caused wild side effects. There's doctor's appointments that turn the calendar multiple colors, and there's fights with insurance, refusing to pay for this and that and then their school. After years of wondering if I was going to make it or not. I started to just try to be normal. You don't come out of something that was supposed to kill you unscathed. I had scars all over my abdomen. Those tubes were still there. And the effect of the medicine and surgery really started to show. If you look at pictures of me during that time, you would notice three things care all over my legs and arms, that slag mites in my mouth that were somehow considered teeth and that growing wet spot on my pants. In short, I was the freak. It was the first time I was in a room with kids who weren't dying, and it was definitely a culture shock. But they took me in and really welcomed me to a proper childhood. And the two tubes slowly came out over time, and I started to forget that I was sick. That warm welcome went away in middle school and I became the bullies. Easy target. Pretty sick to think that they had to get their kicks by making fun of the sick guy, huh? I finally stopped wetting myself in high school and I got my teeth fixed in college, I started to really feel like a person who belonged in regular society. E could just walk around and no one would notice that something was wrong with me. And then my mom's kidneys started to fail. That's the thing about transplants. They don't work forever. A kidney transplant is supposed to last between 10 to 20 years, on average, depending on how well you take care of it. That ISS for the 1st 15 years I was taking my pills religiously, took all my medicine religiously boom, boom, boom doctors, everything taking care of no problem. But that's slowly stopped in college, and I paid the price for my negligence. I needed another kidney right out of college. I needed another stroke of luck, and along came a woman named Miss Leslie Cree walled, Ah, substitute teacher from elementary school, and I said, Let me are contested. I mean, seriously, it was not I didn't think about it. I just let me know never thinking in a million years that I would hit the jackpot. So just big or you would. Some of her family were not happy with their decision to go through with the surgery, considering I was barely in her life and that I wasn't family. But she said doing something like this was on her bucket list, and on August 12, 2014, we were pushed back into the operating room. Miss Greenwald said she felt she was hit by a truck. After she woke up, I woke up with 39 staples down the middle of my abdomen and her kidney right there. I was out of the hospital in a week and back to work in a month. She was back to teaching at the end of August. She has no regrets about going through with the surgery, but she doesn't feel like a hero, though she did save my life, the only part that I was uncomfortable with I still am is like the hero complex, like people have treated me. I'm a hero, like for doing this, and it's sometimes uncomfortable. I don't know how else I mean, it's so funny. I love your folks to death, but they would introduce me not as Leslie. This is skies, kidney donor right is like, Yeah, I know, but I know I did do that, but it made me so uncomfortable. It is not that I think it was. It is an awesome thing. It truly is. But I just don't understand why other people don't do things like this. I really don't hero or not. Her gift has kept me alive and gave me what I feel. It's my final wake up call to really do something with myself. I saw how my life was really running out. I promised myself before I left the hospital that I would not give into fears that held me back. I just went crazy. Nine months to the day after my transplant, I find myself alone in Iceland. After I quit all my jobs and I began hitchhiking around the country. I experienced love at first sight, royally screwed that up, of course, and moved to Germany to chase after my dream of covering sports. And then I found the transplant games. I competed in the U. S. Games in 1998. I was six years old and only competed in the ball throw in 50 yard sprint at that age. That's all one can really do now. At 25 the competition blew wide open when the world came together in Malaga, Spain, last week. I have to admit, I didn't do much training. Sure, I wanted to win, but I was more focused on just meeting people there. I signed up for some sports and I knew, like basketball and table tennis and some others, I didn't just to try it out like paddle tennis and petanque. At the bullring in Malaga, where Pablo Picasso used to watch the bullfights, transplant recipients from more than 50 countries entered to the cheering crowd. But the biggest cheers at the opening ceremony weren't for any nation. Not even the hosts, whose for the ones who came in after the hosts, the donors and donor families received a five minute standing ovation as they made their way around the bullring. My mom, who was among the other donors, was told to get ready to cry when she came in when we walked in the feeling you know, I've been at the Olympics on that's a special feeling. You're proud and whatever. This was amazing because people were a standing ovation for helping others. You know, it was like, you know, you're never recognized and it was really cool because It just was tears. Just like a lot of people really understand that most people don't understand that people are walking around because they gave, you know they don't understand. Sorry, I forgot to mention both. My parents were world class paddlers and worked at the Olympics in years past. I wound up finishing third in paddle tennis and petanque, doubles and second basketball, but I was totally destroyed in table tennis at these games, The results don't really matter. Sure you wanna win? Sure, it's nice to come home with some hardware, but it's more important to come away from the competition with friends and a newfound appreciation for what we have. My paddle tennis partner, Michelle Devil, can certainly to test to that after meeting a little girl from Japan is a small little Japanese girl that I met one night, and her mom said, My daughter has an American heart, and so I just like, took a picture where I take a picture with her and she said Yes. And today I saw her and I had my liberty crown from the U. S. Games on, and she was, you know, looking at it, and I said would you like it? And I put it on her hat and she was so proud she she couldn't speak English, so she she just stood up like the Statue of Liberty. It was so priceless. And she she kept it. She wore it and threw her ball toss, and she won silver for a six year old. I mean, I just fell in love with this little girl and she just was the epitome of what this is all about. My apologies for that gasp there. But that's just precious. There are times they've looked down and see my scars, all those cuts, all that time in the hospital, the doctors appointments, crying into the void. I've yet to meet someone else with three kidney transplants yet to meet someone else with four kidneys from four different people. Perhaps I really am the only one like me out there, but that's okay if I just sit here and contemplate how rare my situation is, I'll just wind up lonely, and that helps no one. I just have to get out there and do what I love with the time. I wasn't supposed tohave. I've always wondered if my kidneys make me me or not. It is a major part of my life with all the pill bottles and trips to the hospital I have to make. But I'm not just a kidney guy. I travel, take photos and attempt to compete in sports songs. I'm here. That's what I'm going to Dio and Malaga, Spain, for D W I'm kind and back. This'll report was brought to you by D. W