Jeanette Bracken

Hello, my name is Jeanette Bracken. I am a single mother living in St. George, Utah. I was asked to write this page of the site. I would like to share with you my personal journey with Polycystic Kidney Disease.

When I was 6 years old I remember my grandma Staheli dying of polysistic kidneys. There was basically no cure for her. When I  was 38 my mother died from the same disease after being on dialysis for four years.  When I was 39 I was pregnant with twins and as the nurse was doing the ultra sound to see if I was pregnant with twins, she said to me, “Do you know you have polysistic kidney’s?” I told her I had not been told that before, but I always thought I would have it. When I was in 2nd grade I had spent time in the Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake for kidney and bladder problems. But even back then they never said I had the disease. There are 6 kids in my family (brothers and sisters)  of course we all wondered if we had it but none of us wanted to be tested for it.

It was still another 10 years before my kidneys were bad enough that I had to go on dialysis. I started dialysis 2 1/2 years ago when I was 49 years old. I am a single mom with 6 kids. My youngest was  7 years old and I  did not want to leave him with out a mother. I decided to be tested for a kidney transplant and they told me I was a prime candidate for a transplant. So I was put on a waiting list. Last Nov. 2009  the hospital called and said they would have to put a transplant on hold for me unless I could raise 20% of the cost of the surgery.

At first I thought it would be impossible for me to raise that kind of money. And I  let months go by before my friend, Paula started urging me to do something about it.   Paula is a friend of mine who has been asking me for over a year now to let her donate her kidney.  I have been putting her off, because she is in the same boat I am, a single mom with 4 children of her own. I did not want her to put her health at risk on my account, she needed to take care of her children. But Paula was insistent and told me on several occasions that she was the same blood type and she knew she was meant to do this. She would ask me all the time to give her the transplant number so she could get things started. I thought if I didn’t give it to her she would give up and change her mind about donating the kidney. But she didn’t. She hung in there and finally this past summer I gave her the transplant number. She has done almost all the testing and is just finishing up the last test. So in about 2 weeks we should know if she is a match. If she is not, we have signed trade papers to do a kidney trade which will mean she will still be a kidney donor to some one else and I will receive a kidney from someone else. So either way I will receive a transplant if I can raise the money to pay the 20%.

The picture is of me when I was awarded the “2′nd Miler Award.” The boys in the picture are my boys. Dakota is the oldest one, he is 16 and just finished his eagle scout project. He will be getting that sometime in 2011. And the youngest one is Justin, he is 10 and a Webelos. He is working towards his Arrow of Light. My children all worry and care about me. But my now 10 year old son, touches my heart every night when he prays that his mom can  get a kidney transplant. He tells me if I get a transplant I can spend more time with him. That I can be home more and not have to be gone to work and dialysis all the time. I work two jobs 6 days a week, and go to dialysis 3 days a week, so I am really gone a lot from home.

In terms of what I like to do … I am the Cub Master in my LDS ward and I love working with the boys in the Cub Scouts.  I also like to sew, quilt, read and do genealogy. I like to embroidery and crochet at dialysis. It helps the time go by faster while on the machine. Thanks for reading my story.