I don't post here often but trying to get back into the habit. A brutal past two years being in kidney failure, while living with a single kidney. My friends have provided a fantastic support system, my social worker is a huge help, my kidney doc has been a boost for me. The one area that has let me down is my family. Everybody told me how my brother would be my best chance at a donor but he claims that he was ruled out. I say claims, because he put up a wall about every single question I asked him. I had TV interview, phone interviews for newspaper articles and turned to him as someone I believed had applied and went through some process. All I got was "the experience was personalized to me", "I don't see what sharing what I went through does to educate people for a TV segment", he allegedly was ruled out and never said a word to my parents or I about it, and when my doctor wanted to know his status he didn't trust that my doctor was actually asking the question. Too many red flags for someone who was rejected, right? It's not like we're distant with each other but the past year has taught me that he only cares about himself.

He is shielded by privacy laws so he can tell people he applied and tried, but then came a do-over scenario, where I asked for his help recently. He had a class reunion event, and argued in the past that I never told him how he could help (everybody else helping asked me, I didn't have to go to anyone and tell them), so I told him how he could help, by distributing flyers at his reunion. I gave a whopping stack of 10 of them and I learned he dumped off 5 to one person and brought the other 5 home because "this really wasn't the place for it." So involving someone new I decided it was time to create a list of the people helping, but more importantly where anybody has shared my flyers, so that new helpers don't duplicate stops. When I asked my brother, instead of answering he treated it like I was doing a social experiment, saying the goal sounds like to find out how far reaching that my flyer has gone. No. And then he insisted he could share a liver transplant flyer he saw in his travels. That was highly insulting and really showed me he's not serious about helping me. 

The hardest part is I know my parents can't pick a side but it sure seems like they did. They believed his lies about being ruled out as a candidate and gave me the "He's your brother, he wouldn't lie about that" and "So he's not a healthy candidate, he can't be your donor." I'm big on words, so can't be or doesn't want to be my donor became the thing. They fought hard to defend him. And the last such incident, our neighbor (no relation) was visiting and updating me about where she's shared my flyer, other events she's attending where she can promote the event for me. All things she thought of herself that I never asked her to get involved with, and it really put a spotlight on how awful my brother truly is. Her visit on the weekend was funny timing because I certainly had no intentions of just being like "hey this is happening and my brother isn't helping", she had no idea about his lack of involvement, so I told her about the classmate of my brother's that got involved in things and she then asked what my brother's been doing to help. I didn't hesitate, and I was happy that she asked, and that my parents were right there. I explained that he hasn't helped with anything and she looked really mad. Mom defended him, Dad said "were you expecting anything different?" so I guess he knows his reputation by now. Unintentional fireworks but pleased with the outcome of things. 

Has anyone here been looking for an organ donor and have bad experiences with family members lying or backing out? It's the lying that bothers me. If he simply said "I don't feel comfortable doing this" or "I'm scared to do it" all these hostilities wouldn't exist. A friend of mine said as much, and probably couldn't have been a donor but I thanked him for being honest with me. There's always a right way and a wrong way to handle things, and I value the people who have been transparent throughout the process, whether they're scared to be a donor, or applied and were ruled out (several have given me that courtesy). It's not that I'm mad that my brother won't be my donor, I know some friends were upset with him, not believing that he was actually ruled out and it just seemed too convenient.. but the best case scenario for me is someone else gets all the credit instead for saving my life some day. 

To bring some closure to the conflict, I made a list of incidents he was responsible for over the span of my need for a transplant up to current times and he's basically done something awful every other month for the last two years. That's a lot of time but at least he's being consistently awful, if nothing else. Whether it's been lying about being a donor, trying to bully me for information about my friends, cyberstalking my friends (and getting caught), being intentionally avoidant, or deferring our mother's care to me (in his own words, "she's all your responsibility) he texted me last year, well aware of my own situation. But the list was nice to have closure to say this isn't a conflict I created, but it's one I'm going to end and leave behind.