An end to the bickering.

The chicken cacciatore recipe turned out to be wonderful. There haven’t been many low sodium recipes I have found worth getting excited about, but that one is a keeper. Unhappily, that was about the best thing I can say about dinner last night.

Things started off fine. Sisters arrived in bubbly moods and we sat and chatted a bit. I’d made dinner the night before, so all I had to do was reheat it and make rice, which meant I didn’t have to spend much time in the kitchen. I served about an hour after they arrived, and both sisters were enthusiastic about the meal. We were in no hurry to get up from the table, so we ended up chatting over the empty dishes for a bit. Things went downhill from there.

The Younger Sister started asking me questions about what how I’ve been doing and about I know regarding living donor programs. The Elder Sister always pulls back once the topic of my health comes up; she simply isn’t comfortable talking about it. Since the discussion was steering its way towards something they both had volunteered to do, I responded to the questions as best as I knew how.

The Sisters found out several weeks ago, when they went in for their preliminary interview, that they were going to have to decide between themselves which one of them gets tested for transplant compatibility. It is hospital policy not to test more than one volunteer donor at a time. If the first volunteer doesn’t qualify for compatibility or health reasons, then the hospital will move on and test a second person. The Sisters have been bickering ever since then about who gets tested first.

The Younger Sister is trying to make a case for deciding based on which of the two is more likely to be chosen as healthy and compatible. I tried to tell her at dinner last night that she was looking at this the wrong way. That was the sort of thing the doctors would decide when one of the two finally goes for the screening. The things the Sisters should be discussing are things that the screening panel will not take into account, such as whose employer is going to be more understanding about lost time, who is in a better position to miss time from work, and who might be the better care-giver to the two of us who are going to be laid up. I was constantly interrupted, and I don’t think my points got across. Of course, this was the point when the phone rang. It was the Socialist, checking in from the west coast.

While I was on the phone, a full fledged arguement broke out in the next room between the siblings. I don’t know what it was about, since I was trying to pay attention to The Socialist (who was getting progressively annoyed because he could tell I was distracted and not giving him my full attention). By the time I got off the phone, The Socialist was in a bit of a huff, the Elder Sister was in the bathroom crying, and the Younger Sister was not forthcoming with any explanations except to say that she was told to “lay it on the line” which she apparently had done. The rest of the evening was tense, with the Elder Sister spending time in any room of the house where the Younger Sister was not. I can only imagine their ride home together, since they came in the same car. I wonder if Elder Sister insisted on riding home in the trunk.

Frankly, the option of getting a partial liver from one of them is not worth this shit. I’d rather wait for a cadavor organ, thank-you very much. If anything happens to me, those two are going to be stuck with each other, and I don’t want this as an issue coming between them. I told the Younger Sister last night to forget the whole thing, that I was not going to consider the living donor program after all. Again, she pretty much brushed me off, as she did with my comments earlier at dinner about how they should go about deciding who gets tested first. This only stregthened my resolve. Apparently my wishes don’t count here. I truly don’t need this. I’ll tell both of them again later, when the emotions die down a bit, that I will not do the living donor program. If I’m smart, I should probably tell them separately. Or maybe just send an e-mail, to make it harder for them to argue back. That should put an end to the in-fighting.

I still don’t know what the hell the argument was about last night.