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Where's space tat come from the New York Times and W B you are Boston. This is modern love stories of love, loss and redemption. I'm you host, Meghna Chakrabarti love is, generosity, but just how much of yourself your physical flesh and blood, would you give to the person you love here's com De Sarah Silverman Red Angelo Ball seat as modern love, essay beneath the modest alter eager I see my superhero. I was just seventeen a typical college. Freshmen can

and primarily with exploring my new found freedom, my drinking skill, and the boys in the dorm next door. When one day I came, home from sociology class with swollen ankles. Oh my god, my roommate said you're pregnant, that's not it! I assured her. I called my mother. She scolded me it's because you're drinking too much, but when she told my father Was a physician about my condition? He grabbed the phone and said come home He took me to the hospital where specialists explained to me that I had a kidney disease called glue, marry you loan of Freitas. I would. To start dialysis, a three hour three days a week, treatment to clean the waste out of my blood sitting up in my Paper thin hospital gown, I said you know

this really is not a good time. I tried to stick it out for the rest of the semester dealing with dialysis while trying to maintain the life of an average Loyola college. Freshman. But the treatments exhausted me and eventually I had to drop out- I moved back home to Pennsylvania. where I sat in my childhood bedroom for the rest of the school year, contemplating what the doctor said could be an alternative to dialysis, a kidney transplant. Luckily I had an older brother who is sweet and selfless, and most Important healthy, the surgery is usually harder on the donor. The surgeon told him, I'm not worried. My brother said

It was not a surprise that is genes matched mine, but it was lucky that the surgery was easy without complications. He recovered more quickly than expected, and the transplant appeared to be a success within months. I was back at school and on track to graduate on schedule, and it was during this time at a college lawn party that I met Christopher sitting in a t, shirt wearing a pair of gold Elvis sunglasses. He looked my direction and said: are you some tonight little lady as cheesy as this, Mine was, I have to admit I was hooked. one night as we sat in a crowded bar. I warned him about my kidney disease. I put every oddity, an element of mine out there- I have three kidneys, I said so. Would I have a Spock ear.

I take like nine medications. Every morning I confessed I get, through skylights. I have a big discard that goes from the side of my belly, all the way down to below my bikini line. I have to see it. He said, leaning across the table and then giving me a wink. My frank admissions didn't cause him to get up and leave as often happened with other boys. He stay And ordered another drink and he continued to stay through years of medication, changes, doctor appointments and lab tests. He stayed as we sorted through all those life changing decisions where we going to move next. What will we do for work and he stayed even when years later I began to reject my brother's kidney.

Christopher watched as my young body quickly turned into that of an old woman first with the reappearance of the swollen ankles then, with nausea and back pains and finally, with a limp in my step from the gout went back on dialysis, convinced that my luck had run out. I would need another new kidney, but from home Christopher committed to the transplant before we knew he was even a viable donor. He came into our kitchen said I'll. Give you mine the best part I didn't even have to ask, but he had a few tough stipulations. You have to watch your diet. I nodded enthusiastically whatever

You say under the table. My legs were shaking no more drinking, I'm talking like a glass of wine at dinner, maybe no more smoking, your occasional cigarettes. Okay, I said I give you my kidney you've got to keep it be good to it. I understood is concerned. I record up to that point had not been the cleanest. When I went back to school after receiving my brother's kidney, I wanted to

Wake up right, where I left off, trying to feel normal again among my peers. I I partying to excess. I stayed out too late and exhausted myself on the weekends I didn't think about what a life like that would eventually do to my already compromised state of health. I promise I said, but at that point I would have agreed to anything we shook on our deal before he dipped me a stare style and planted his warm lips on mine for weeks, the transplant team, poked and prodded Christopher with blood tests x rays and m r I's assessing his viability, but I knew he'd be a match

I knew it from the way we finished each other's sentences and said the punchline to each other's jokes. I knew it from the way he studied me on hikes. As I was told awkwardly on precarious boulders, and I was right well he's good enough said the nurse when we met to hear the result I watched her lips as she gave us the details of the operation, but all I could think about was how love had saved me. when the transplant was over, my kidney function was restored and I felt healthier than I had in a long time, but Christopher did not escape as cleanly a few days

After his incision became infected, he began to feel weak. He lost his appetite. The doctors put him on bed rest for six weeks to allow the wound to heal, though I finally felt better again, it was painful to watch this normally active guy stuck in a bed staring at the Wall Day after day and to know that he was there because of me when my It tells people at supermarkets about Christopher and me they begin to cry when he and I go out to dinner with other couples, I make them swoon with our love story. He saved my life. I tell them. No, he didn't Christopher, says smirking with annoyance, but it was true, despite his modesty, then one weekend in November, just three months after the transplant, I woke up with a blinding headache that would not go away.

it spread into severe back pain and an astronomical fever, this is not happening. I thought as they wish. Me, from the emergency room to the ward, I would upstairs for three weeks as doctors examined my condition and watch my kidney function fluctuate every night, as I prayed in my hospital bed that I would not lose this kidney Christopher sat near by reading a book or looking out, for soccer scores on the wall mounted tv. What would it mean if I were to reject his kidney? I wondered what if can't rescue me. After all, in the end, my symptoms turned out to be a result of an infection,

not of outright rejection, and while there was no major damage to the kidney, the illness did serious damage to the one thing that up until then, I had been sure of that love would save me. as someone who has been sick for the last fifteen years. I'm always looking for the cure. I wait for the hero to swim, Ben and save the girl the more romantic. In my mind, the better Christopher's version of our fairy tale has always been a bit different from mine. A little more pragmatic way I say marriage, what do we need marriage for the fact that you gave me your kidney should show the world that were destined to be together, and he says women we should get married, so my health benefits can pay for your lab tests and maintenance drugs. When I would say what, if I lose this kidney, he says his voice common cool. then I'll drive. You to dialysis until you get a new one.

Chances are. That is the position we will find ourselves in one day and he to know it. He knows that even if I watch my salt and tender with his kidney and try in earnest to keep it with me. some day. My body will discover that is kidney as foreign and strange and will try to get rid of it Christopher. As my match in terms of blood and tissue, along with being my match in almost every other conceivable way. In the end, even may not be enough to deliver me from the pain and effects of my affliction. He may not be able to save my life, but in so many ways? He already I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other.

individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed. Sorry, it may have happened again. I have one friend I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I was getting nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that. me and my dad. We like to play fun together, and I wish the out I forgot to see it. J, a c k, P, o t Jack yeah yeah I'm same is risky. The digital passes editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at an why times, dot com, Flash games ass

Sarah Silverman reading Angela Ball Cedars essay beneath a modest alter ego. I see my superhero well, it's been ten years since Angela's peace was published is Chris driving her to dialysis, be sure you got plenty of tissues at hand, because we'll here,

Angela and her superhero are doing today after the break support for a modern love. The pod cast comes from living proof, the science behind healthy hair, I'm Katy from living proof, and we get love letters from stylus till like this one dear living proof, I am not a product junkie, that's what most products are junkie. However, every once in a while a product will stand up to my question does make everything I'll Caesar after testing these out, I'm not ashamed say thank you for creating worthwhile products from cash use. The code, love for a free travel size, dry shampoo, with their twenty dollar order, living proof, dot, com, we're back its modern love, the podcast, a magnet shocker body with.

I have tissues in hand because now a postscript from the author of this week's essay Angela Ballsy, do so after the peace Chris and I got married and shortly after it was published, we had our daughter, Nico. and it was kind of a risk when we had her, because we knew that Chris's kidney Functioning quite well, and we were on this nice healthy road, so we got pregnant. She was born early, but she was healthy. The pregnancy was a lot on the kidney and the kidney wasn't able to recover so shortly after she was born and I lost Chris's kidney. So the peace is interesting to me because it was very much about me being very. hopeful that this kidney was going to last us forever and our love was going to pull us through. My name is Christopher.

Doyle and I'm Angela's husband when animals neither one I do needed gave out. I was really has really disappointed of my kidney. I thought I could have been much harder Obviously it did bring our daughter into the world. So I guess it has a saving grace and if it had to go out and went out with a bang they had a beautiful baby girl, but increases kidney meant that Angela had to spend the first year of her daughter's life on dialysis. It was not what I was expected: motherhood to be like at all being sick while she was getting stronger and stronger every day, but since then Nico our our daughter, she's, almost eight she's, healthy and after my third transplant. I am also healthy and strong. A friend decided to donate her

kidney to me. She had been with us through this whole time and knew that I was in trouble and needed help and the rest is smooth sailing at history. Hopefully Angela and Chris will celebrate their tenth anniversary later this year. They live in. all too more, where Angela's a high school english teacher. My life today so normal, and so ring- and I love it I how boring it is. I love that I don't have to worry about. The next That's gonna happen to my body. Writer worry about the next time. Oh that we have to deal with. I love that I can teach

And talk about writing all day, but I get to take care of my kid. That's all I think something which some of us might take for granted, but I got to take care of her right. Instead of other people taking care of me, I have five kidneys in my body. They dont come out. They just keep them in there. I don't know I kind of like the idea of having them all in there. I have my brother, my husband and my dear friends, all in my body like quite literally right and that's pretty beautiful Angela Ball, cedar author of this week's essay we also heard from her husband, Christopher Doyle, last year's more of their story in her two thousand and eleven Memoir Moon face.

Oh modern love, editor Daniel Jones, shares what he took away from Angeles story. I like what she says and this I say about how she trying to read. Greater meaning or sense of fate into this decision by her boyfriend to give her a kidney, and I like how she gets beyond that and thinks okay. Well, love! Isn't the thing? That's saving me a healthy kidney is saving me. And it was a loving act that brought that kidney too me- and let me have it, but if the kidney fails, then it's the kidney. That's letting me down, not the person, not love itself when it gets right down. it's about real things and real people and failing organs, and I think we're better off if we stop thinking It was either meant to be this way or it was not meant to be this way. Dan Jones, editor of modern love for the New York Times, and I really

I agree with their because that seems to be the lightning bolt in so many of our modern love stories that in life and in love. We are so fortunate simply to be special thanks to Sarah Silverman for reading Angela's essay. They starred in the film I smile back, and you can see her later this year in the movie popstar with Andy Samberg. You can also see her performing stand up around the country. This May and June next week on modern love, Cheryl strayed co, host of You be yours, dear sugar Pine cast an author of best selling memoir wild.

You brings us a story about taking a second chance love. I looked across the table at my date, an attractive brown eyed man with two young children in a broken marriage as he recounted his romantic history I smiled and that I could be in a relationship with a man like this. In fact, I knew I could. I had married him, Modern love is a production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston NPR station, it is produced directed and edited by Jessica, Alpert John Parity and am receive the aid Here for the modern LA podcast was conceived by Visa Tobin are casting consult. Is Amy Lippens Iris is our executive producer. Daniel Jones is added her of modern love for the New York Times and adviser to the show music for the pod cast courtesy of apes. M and the go licence. Collection have ghostly, songs, dot, com, a magnet.

Nobody see you next week.