Planning to Die

It's oddly exciting and very weird. The questions that come to mind...are not things I would have asked myself before. I try to read as many peoples' experiences as possible. I try to figure out what it has been like for others so I can better make decisions for me.

But it never helps. I've made a controversial decision to not do dialysis or transplant. For now, anyway. I just can't see myself doing dialysis for longer than a month or so. It would only be done in the case that I need more time to say goodbye and all that. It would be hard for me to get a transplant with my blood and veins anyway, and then just all the side-effects, the pills you have to take, the complications, the likelihood that the transplant will fail, a transplant's short life-span...it just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Given that, I could die from kidney failure in my 40's. If aortic or brain aneurysms or heart disease don't kill me first. That could possibly happen 10 years from now.

So...if I don't "fight" as so many people put it, am I committing a sin? Am I being a coward? Not that I think suicide is a sin or an act of cowardice, but is this suicide? Is it the same thing? Sometimes when I am feeling extremely depressed I think of taking aspirin - which causes irreparable kidney damage for PKD kidneys. I only know this because I was looking into alternatives to taking self-administered shots to avoid throwing a clot and dying or losing a baby. If I did take aspirin, would that be like suicide?

I don't want to and I don't know if I even could give myself shots every day. My veins are tiny, they need butterfly needles to draw blood. How can I give myself shots? I hate needles! Should I even have kids? My genes are crap. They sterilize cats that have PKD. Should I just ignorantly produce more defective people? Will the world become a place where there could be discrimination against them someday because of their illness? What about their health insurance? I could do invitro and pgd, to make sure I don't pass on my defective genes, but I consider that procedure abortion. And that is just not an option.

Some women say, had they known they had PKD, they wouldn't have had kids. Some women say otherwise, but still. I can't help but wonder. And then, to bring it full-circle, if I don't get a transplant, I may only live to see them reach 20 or so. I won't be there for them. How could I do that to them? I think it worse to give them hope with some stupid transplant or dialysis, but would they then resent me for not "fighting"? Would they think it was their fault? Should I "fight" and suffer the consequences for them?

I don't know. I will pray as I go, but in the end, my life is already planned out for me. I just have to ask for guidance to make the right decisions when the time comes for them.