I nominate my husband Jamar Howard for the person of the week.  Our story is a little different than most. I not only nominate him because of his courageousness ,but his strong will to live.  My husband and I have been together three years and married two years. The past three years he had to deal with kidney disease.  It was a long road ahead of us, and neither one of us knew what to expect. Jamar was a type one diabetic since he had turned eighteen years old. Due to not having the means to get his insulin as needed, he went into kidney failure. His kidneys were operating at less than ten percent.

By the time we caught it he was already at stage five kidney disease. He was hurting in his lower back. We thought it was just him having back issues.  So we went to the chiropractor to see if that would help with the pain. After several chiropractic treatments he was still having the back pain.  We then went to the kidney specialist and did all the necessary tests to determine if it was indeed his kidneys. The test results were shocking. It was his kidneys and it didn’t look too good.  That was the day we learned Jamar had stage five kidney disease.

We were to go back to the doctor to talk about the next steps when suddenly Jamar coughed up blood.  We rushed to the emergency room, and that is when he got the tube inserted into his abdomen to start peritoneal dialysis . We found out he had a rare blood disorder as well called TTP.  He had to get his blooded filtered out through a machine called plasmapheresis in order to get rid of it. They placed a port in his neck so he could do dialysis while in the hospital. We stayed in the hospital for a whole month..

When we got home Jamar started doing dialysis at home.  It was going fine, until his body started absorbing the dialysis solution.  Which is like pure sugar water that fills his abdomen ,and collects the waste his kidneys weren’t able to filtrate.  We did that for a year and a half, and let me tell you, I hated it! It not only was time consuming setting up the machine,the late night alarms saying the line was clogged,him getting tangled, the tube getting pulled off from his abdomen waking up with solution everywhere.  It also came with all the supplies needed for 30 days supplies which filled up half our bedroom.
He gained fluid weight bad, and his sugars were through the roof!  Even battling Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA) and ending up in ICU a few times.  Not only did they go tremendously high, but he would also have severe lows due to changes in his insulin.  I remember being at lunch at Bonanza we just got there, and he had a very bad one. The crew there were great help.  There was a time I was at work, thank God his Mom was visiting to call the ambulance because he had a low and wouldn’t wake up out of his sleep.  He would tend to do that quite often, but most the time I was home to to help fix his blood sugar. Such scary moments not knowing if your husband is ever going to wake up.

It was a rough journey.  We had over 400 doctor visits.It was hard as a wife to work when I had to be home to take care of my husband.  We tried getting on four different transplant lists. The lists were Memphis, Jackson, Nashville, and Birmingham.  Jackson denied us because they told him not to take his insulin before coming for the full day of testing, and his sugar was well over 1800. They advised us to goto the emergency room as we were leaving. He took his insulin and it slowly came down over a days time.  We couldn’t get his protein level high enough for Nashville until the very end. Our first transplant list we were accepted to was Memphis, but we did make it onto Birmingham’s list too.

We had to watch what he ate. With kidney disease your protein level has to stay at a specific range. For the first time Jamar had started eating yogurt, greek yogurt at that. Not my first choice,but I guess being told eat more eggs constantly would get old. Some of his lab work always had to be adjusted. His phosphorus was either too high or too low. It being too high caused muscle deterioration,intestinal problems,and he started to become weak. I remember him always saying, “Slow down you just left me.” as we would be walking into the store , and I caught myself walking a little faster than him. He became so weak he had to use a cane. I began to catch myself and walk by his side more often.

After the second failed attempt at a fistula in Tupelo, we had his third fistula surgery with Dr. Lucas in Greenwood, Ms. The best if you ask me. By this time his doctor had made the suggestion for hemodialysis since home dialysis at home wasn’t working too well . To be honest it scared us. You know how you hear horror stories? Yeah, well Jamar had to do dialysis through his neck with a port while at the hospital, and he remembers older individuals screaming. We also heard that diabetics on hemodialysis have a better chance at losing their legs, but we had to try it, there was no other option. Dialysis or die, there was no other choice. So we chose to live. Wouldn’t you?

His protein levels rose, his fluid retention was reduced, and his sugars weren’t too bad. All we had to do was watch his blood pressure levels close. There were times he would have to sit down, or he couldn’t get out of bed because his blood pressure would be too low . we missed out on doing quite a bit during these few years, but we got through it. It was definitely stressful at times.Jamar was always in pain the whole journey. Some days better than others. We prayed, cried, and feared death. My husband would always say, “ I just want to be normal. Even though my husband was getting weaker my motto was “It could always be worse.” , and “In God’s timing NOT ours!” To be honest those were the words that got me through this journey, and i had to continuously tell my husband this because I had faith everything was going to work out, even if it wasn’t the way or time frame we had hoped for.

We got about three calls with the words “Stay by the phone. You might need to come in for transplant surgery.” Only to be told later he wasn’t the best recipient match. The one time we got the call to “COME NOW.” is when we found out Jamar had ascites which was infected fluid build up in his abdomen which we couldn’t get to go away. UAB denied him surgery. All while calling him a “mystery” and couldn’t figure out what was causing it ,or just how to fix the problem. Our next visit we hydroplaned in the middle of a 6 lane highway and spun in the middle. Thankful to be alive only to make it there and find out we were off the list. They couldn’t help Jamar figure out how to fix the problem. Good news though, we did! There were two of his medications we thought caused the issue.  One for his blood pressure and one for his neuropathy. We had to get his abdomen drained every 2 weeks, for a couple months with paracentesis .Basically a tube stuck in his side and the fluid drains out either by suction or gravity. By stopping the medications and getting drained more frequently it eventually stopped building up. Mind you we never called UAB back because Jamar felt they just gave up on him.

Fast forward a little while later we had just picked up a pizza. Jamar picked me up from work, and right when we got in the door his phone rang. It was Memphis, they said, “How long will it take for you to get here? “ All i remember was i was so excited, but nervous at the same time. It was raining horribly, and well I was still not ready to drive in the rai , so Jamar drove.His mom and our daughter were with us. We got there , but it wasn’t until the next day he actually went for surgery. It was the longest wait I had ever endured. We were so anxious The time came and I kissed my husband and said, “ I love you, see you in a little bit.” As he went down for surgery I was able to go see him right before he went again, and well as i was going down on the elevator I prayed for him. That everything would go alright and most of all the kidney would work great as well as the pancreas.  Please God let the kidney work, but please let the pancreas work as well is what I prayed for.

Hours went by, but they would let me know every so often that everything was going great. I barely slept i was waiting for their calls. Next thing i knew he was out of surgery, and in recovery.When I got down there he was out of it,and sleeping off and on. By the time he came out of it. He had thought he had been in the hospital for 3 more days.  He was able to make urine again at an astonishing amount, and his sugar levels were stable. We were so happy. All we know is our donor was a deceased twenty to thirty yr old, and the donor’s organs came from Knoxville, TN . Another thing I know is we are so grateful. His surgery was January 3rd, 2019, and he is doing fantastic. Even gained some muscle, and has more energy than a kid. His exact words were, “I feel like a teenager.”

We have been home for a few months, and we went from going to the dr for lab work once a week, to two weeks, now to once a month.  He will have to take anti rejection pills for the rest of his life. Now he gets to watch his little girl grow up, and now he can stream twitch.tv/phaytalis, without having fluid build up in the lower part of his body.  I am very proud of him. H went through multiple procedures. Two heart catheters, three fistula surgeries, and a kidney biopsy, just to name a few. He has a new outlook on life. Now we live in the moment, because for so long we weren’t sure about the outcome of this journey..

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So the reason I nominate my husband Jamar Howard is because I could never have dealt with the things he had to.  You would walk right by him in the store, and he would always have a smile on his face. You would never have known he was sick unless you knew, saw him with his cane, followed our story on Facebook (Jamar’s Kidney), or seen him when he got real bad sick toward the end before his transplant.  He very rarely complained. He’s a survivor, and we plan to live our life making memories we once thought we wouldn’t have the chance to make. Even while he was sick we still liked to help others. See we are real big hearted people. We held a toy drive two years in a row for children for Christmas.  Jamar is a streamer so he even had people from different states send toys for the drive as well. We also did a blanket and pillow drive for the homeless of Lee County. It was a big turn out as well. We plan to do more in the future since he is healthier.

If you know Jamar he is the best friend you could ever ask for.  He keeps people close to him whether it’s from him working with you, meeting him,or growing up with him.  People always say just how great he is. They are right. He can be blunt at times,, or give you an eye roll a time or two. He is an amazing father there is no denying that.  They’re two peas and a pod. So yes, I Leticia Howard nominate my husband for his courageousness, strength, and selflessness. Also for him being an amazing person, who can get through anything that is thrown at him in life. We got this honey.