At 26, I gave my kidney to my dad even though he begged me not to. I couldn\u2019t watch him die when I had a chance to help, but three weeks after the surgery, he died from an unexpected complication. Grieving him was unbearable, made worse by guilt and anger I couldn\u2019t explain. A month later, while searching his drawer for paperwork, I found a letter addressed to me. He wrote that doctors had told him months earlier his body would reject any transplant, but he kept it from me because he couldn\u2019t take away my hope. Those three weeks after my surgery, when I sat beside him and held his hand every day, had been the happiest three weeks of his life. \u201cYou did save me, just not in the way either of us expected,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am so proud of the man you became.\u201d I sat on his bedroom floor and cried. He knew I would find that letter exactly when I needed it most. READ MORE BELOW <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 26, I gave my kidney to my dad even though he begged me not to. I couldn\u2019t watch him die when I had a chance to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"yoast_head":"\n