In January of ’82 I was in dialysis already in Argentina. I had already a kidney transplant in my country in June 1975, with my mother, which worked perfectly all right until December of ’81 and the whole thing went down the tubes. It was very small, the chances to get another.
Nora, my former wife, she speak English perfectly. Her mother was an English teacher and most of her family lives here. Nora is very strong. She got me here in MCV … and in 1983 I got my second transplant.
Halloween day I got the kidney transplant. … I stayed [at MCV] until February of ’84, because the kidney was working a little bit no, yes, no, yes. Nora put me with a doctor in Argentina who was my son’s pediatrician. He told me, “Carlos, you like to die? Then just die now. Be a man, and get back on your feet. Your son, he’s 10 years old, he needs you. Stop complaining like an idiot.” [Sarcastically]: The tender touch.
In April ’86 I got a transplant and nobody knew. I finished a Friday-afternoon dialysis and I got the transplant that night. It was such a feeling when you wait three years. … At the same time, you don’t want the day to come. The next day, all my nine students were there in the transplant unit. They usually don’t allow young children in the transplant unit, and I didn’t know what was going on.
In two weeks exactly I went back to the school. It was a record for MCV. … Usually it is a month. They told me I was all right and to go home. They told me not to go to the school because of the small children. But the children never gave nothing wrong to me … only a feeling of life.
In 1997, I became a yoga teacher; I did the training. For me yoga was great, and still today. I am a pretty crazy person. I mean, I start working, I have to finish this, and I get under pressure. I got there in the class, the instrument is not very healthy to hold — the guitar, its position. But I am not sure that I would be alive without the yoga idea.
Then that gave me an idea for diet, which is very important with all the medications that make you gain weight. Now I have almost the same weight when I was 18 years old. I have to take medicines every day of my life until the day I die. For me it’s no smoking, I don’t drink. I can’t put more problems inside my body. — As told to Sarah Williams
