When Kansas State student Zoe Schumacher was diagnosed with ANCA vasculitis in March, her life turned upside down.
“I had to change how I functioned as a 21-year-old going to school because immediately when I was diagnosed, I had to move back home with my parents, which was very difficult for me because I was used to being so independent,” Schumacher, senior in marketing visual communication design, said. “… More recently and currently, it impacts my life every day because, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I am reminded of my disease due to my daily dialysis.”
However, Schumacher received some good news when she got a call from her transplant donor nurse saying they found a donor for her kidney transplant.
“I found out a couple days ago,” Schumacher said. “… I had a feeling when I picked up the phone call but I didn’t want to assume and get my hopes up. Then, [my nurse] just let me know and I just started crying. It was a short phone call, but I immediately called my mom, who was at work, and she started crying, and I called my dad, and he was just so happy for me, and then I called my grandparents, and boyfriend and friends, and everybody was just over-the-moon. It’s really an amazing feeling, and I didn’t think it would happen to me this soon.”
Schumacher said though she experienced many setbacks while waiting for a donor, she never lost hope.
“Sometimes it was just an insurance thing, or a logistical thing or a financial thing that held me back from getting to this recovery sooner,” Schumacher said. “I’ve had a couple setbacks that really made me think that I wasn’t going to get the success of finding a donor, where I’m at now. If I could tell anybody who may be going through this or who knows someone who might go through this one day [anything], it’s just to keep your head up when the setbacks keep coming, and you have to control the things that are within your reach and let go of the setbacks. There were several times where I could’ve put my head down and given up, but I used those moments to fuel myself even more.”
Schumacher said while waiting to receive a kidney donor, she had to stay on top of not only her physical health but her mental health, too.
“I have the best support system in the world,” she said. “My roommates, my boyfriend and family and friends — they were the best support in the world, but also I needed to work on my mindfulness and ways to control my anxiety surrounding all of the medical things that I was facing and still have to come in the future … A person my age is not equipped with the knowledge or the life experience to know how to handle something like this. No one really is, but especially someone who’s young, so I’ve just done a bunch of things to get myself in a better place mentally.”
Schumacher said though she will receive a kidney transplant, her journey with kidney disease is far from over.
“They will prescribe me a medication that I will be on for the rest of my life that is an immunosuppressant … so that my body doesn’t reject someone else’s organ,” Schumacher said. “Besides that medication, which will do its job, I want to be in the best mindset that I can be so that there’s an energy flow from my mind to my body that’s very accepting of this process. I think that’ll help a lot with the anxiety of the surgery because, to be honest, I am nervous about having a surgery this serious. I am just accepting and welcoming this surgery, and looking at it as an opportunity to keep living a joyous life.”
Schumacher plans to receive her kidney transplant surgery in December.
“This journey has taught me so much about the world and myself,” Schumacher said. “In respect to the world, it’s taught me about how fragile things are, and how grateful I should be for a chance to live and be healthy. … I’ve done a lot of self-reflection, from the hours that I spent sitting in the dialysis center receiving treatment, to where I’m at now being in my room thinking about my dialysis equipment. … I think I truly understand what resilience means now compared to earlier in my life. It’s always been a part of me, but I’ve had to expand on it this year and I know that I’m going to continue resilience and determination in the future.”
