They're real, and they're SPECTACULAR

At right, my MRI just below my waist. The white disc in the center is my spine, where the main cord is splitting into the separate nerves of the equine caudix (In Latin, literally, 'horsetail'.) The dark disc above it is a spinal disc. Below the vertebra is muscle (looks like meat). And all the rest is kidneys, with all those cysts showing. Consider what formed each cyst was meant to be a tiny tubule used to filter fluids. . . it's a truly bizarre genetic deviation.

Those who recall me as a 120-pound collegiate will be thinking "Huh?" Back then I boasted the figure of your average 13-year-old Little League (OK, maybe of a 15-year-old ringer from Central America.)

Well, a few things have changed, and where other women may have DD chests, I have DD kidneys.

That's what often happens with polycystic kidneys -- they keep growing cysts on top of cysts despite the fact none of it is usable tissue.

So, the average adult's kidney is 4-5 inches long, 2-3 inches wide and an inch and a half thick. (Think an average computer mouse.)

According to CT scans and MRIs, mine are -- each -- nearly a foot long and 5-6 inches across in any dimension. They extend from a point behind my lowest rib way down into my pelvis. They inhibit my breathing when I'm doing anything that involves bending, making everything from landscaping to dog training to just tidying up the house doubly exhausting. They bulge into my stomach, and unless I'm very careful about what I eat when, I end up throwing up doing that aforementioned landscaping. There's just not room in there for, say, a granola bar, half a can of pop and those lousy kidneys.

Starting in summer 2009, I also began having pain. A dull, sick ache most times, a gripping, gasping, freeze-'til-it's-over spasm at -- thankfully -- rarer times. Waking up yelling, sitting at work groaning. . . I was determined to have somebody rescue me by removing these monsters.

However, I faced an equally-determined "let's rule out everything else" attitude from my surgeon -- which is perfectly reasonable, since she'd be taking my life in her hands with a huge open incision in my abdomen.

Although some diseased kidneys can be removed by laparoscopy, through tiny holes, mine would have to come out in a procedure something like the longest 1950s C-section you've ever seen. In fact, it would be such a big deal they'd schedule a couple of "While we're in there" removals along with it -- gall bladder and appendix -- just to take advantage of the opening. Oh, and they might have to take out my spleen as well -- the top of the kidney may extend so far up it compromises it.

Basically, my impression is I'd be gutted like a fish, and after removing everything extraneous, they'd put back in the stuff that wasn't slated to go.

So, my surgeon wanted to make sure the kidneys were what was causing the pain. I was about 99.9 percent sure they were, but of course, that's not empirical evidence.

Finally, I arrived for a visit on a day when the pain was particularly bad. She walked into the exam room to find me in tears, standing next to the examining table with my left leg up on it, bent at the knee. It always felt like if I could get more "room" in my back I'd have less flank pain, so I spent a certain amount of my waking hours either with a knee pulled up to my chest, or, if I were in a store or talking to someone while standing at work, with one knee held up like a particularly clumsy stork.

Thank heavens Randy was at the consultation that followed; his near-master's degree in communication helped with phrases like "I think what Holly is trying to say is" and "I think what the doctor is concerned about is" which helped us lurch to an agreeable conclusion. I got the first fragment of hope I'd seen in this effort as she left the office and said over her shoulder, "I just have to make sure it's the kidneys that are causing you all the trouble. I love to do surgery; if that were the only consideration I'd have you in tomorrow."

You better believe I'd have showed up "tomorrow" if I could have!

The surgeon set up an appointment for an orthopedic surgeon to look at my spine as a last-ditch effort to make sure that wasn't the problem. I was perfectly frank with him about why I was there and what I thought was the problem.

"Well, let's look at your MRI results," he said. "I haven't seen them yet, so we'll be seeing them for the first time together."

He pulled the MRI up and found an image like the one above, where a kidney should be a smooth, small mass localized against the back of the cavity. Another image, a wider view at around the navel region, showed my vertebra and twin white, cystic masses in every direction, right out to the abdominal walls and skin.If there were any digestive functions in the area, you wouldn't know it.

"Well, I'm no kidney doctor, but I can tell there's something really wrong with your kidneys," he said. "As far as I can see you have as healthy a spine as any 42-year-old. I think your problem is these --" he paused, trying to think of a tactful way to phrase it, then gave up "-- these gigantic kidneys."

So there we were, thank goodness. A ticket I could cash in to get away from Vicodinland. Six months after transplant -- say, in October or November -- as long as I'm healing normally, I should be able to have these burdens out.

It took such an emotional struggle to get to this point, during which my pre-transplant coordinator would write me things like "Your kidneys are your friends." Nope; they're unwanted, messy, painful squatters and I'll be glad to kick them out at the soonest opportunity. I feel sorry for them, having tried to do their jobs for so long with such difficulty, but it's an unspeakable relief to have them on the way out.