Love, they say, makes you do the craziest things. Well, the craziest thing Colleen Le did for her ex-boyfriend was to give him a chance at a normal life without the daily tedious artificial dialysis procedures.
Sharing her story on a digital media platform, Buzzfeed, the young damsel said she fell heads over heels for her ex shortly after they met through mutual friends.
“He was really cute and outgoing,” Colleen reminisces. So when her 27-year-old ex-boyfriend narrated his kidney battle to her, she was touched.
‘How can I help?’ was the first question that came to her mind.
“Early on he told me he had chronic kidney disease and Crohn’s disease for 10 years so he had to connect to a machine every night to filter out his kidneys,” she narrated.
She couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her then-boyfriend subjected to what she described as “wearisome” procedure.
So she came up with the crazy idea to give one of her functional two kidneys to her ex who at the time was basically surviving on a machine.
“Just knowing that his kidney function was below 5 per cent made me have this urgency to help him. I didn’t want to wait till his condition get worse,” she said.
This act of love that Colleen embarked on in 2015 was for many, an outrageous move. But naysayers were not going to stop her from taking such a step for her LOVER – I mean, LOVE is all about giving right?
Subsequently, the relevant tests began.
“When you want to donate, you have to be in good health. They have to do tests to make sure your body can survive with just one kidney. So I had to do a bunch of tests to see if I was a match.”
“Probably for about three, four months. Going to his doctor and getting blood work done, glucose tests, different types of scans and then in November, that was when I got the call that my body was ready for the surgery.”
She says it took her two weeks to recover after the surgery. The receiver, her ex-boyfriend needed a longer period.
“For him, his lifestyle changed, they took the tube out of his stomach so he didn’t have to do dialysis anymore, he just had to take anti-rejection pills and pain medicine.”
But the love story wasn’t going to end with the popular adage,“… and they lived happily ever after”.
Things went downhill when her ex-boyfriend went to Las Vegas for a Bachelor Party.
“He was texting me throughout the trip about how much he doesn’t want to be there and how much he wants to read the Bible. And my response to him was ‘Just enjoy yourself’.”
“I didn’t think anything was going to happen at Vegas because he portrayed himself as a really religious man and he stuck to his morals throughout the relationship. And so I thought this was just a regular weekend,” Colleen recounted.
She said upon his return, he paid an unexpected visit where she received heart-breaking news that the dude she would climb the mountain for – in her case, donate a kidney to – has cheated on her.
“He admitted to doing things with some of the bachelorettes at the party. Its funny because those girls knew me and who I was in his life and I was just broken.”
Colleen said despite her ex-boyfriend’s infidelity, she was willing to make the relationship work. But it looked like the universe had other plans.
According to her, the relationship was not the same; frequent fights, insecurities, and simmering tensions became the features of the love story that was once filled with trust, honesty, and love.
However, Colleen didn’t walk away, she hoped that if given time, she will heal and once again fully trust the man having one of her kidneys.
Her ex-boyfriend, instead, didn’t have that time.
“One day we were fighting about him resenting me for not forgiving him fast enough…he said ‘if God wants us to be together, he will bring us back together in the end,’ and hang up.”
“After that, he blocked me on all social media platforms and completely cut me off.”
Colleen’s life was never the same afterward. She was pained and hurt.
But as the popular adage goes, “Time, heals all wounds.” She eventually healed but the scar still remains and she uses it to teach others a lesson or two about romance.
With social media, particularly, TikTok, Colleen sometimes engages her over 27 thousand followers about her ordeal.
She says she holds nothing against her ex-boyfriend. “I don’t regret donating my kidney to him, despite the trauma and the heartbreak that I had to go through it led me to a better place.”
Now, Colleen has a new boyfriend who she is very proud of.