Breaking up is hard to do: The fight over a kidney

I'm sick today. Just a nasty little cold, nothing too drastic, but enough to stay home. While I was falling asleep on a sweet Nyquil high, I thought I saw something on the news about a man who is in a messy divorce, mostly because his wife cheated on him and he now wants his kidney back. What the? I chocked it up to my compromised cognitive state and rolled over to commence the deepest sleep ever. This morning, I've come to realize that I was not drunk on cold meds at all when I read about this story on the Huffington Post...it's true!

Love scorned is a dangerous thing, especially when an organ is at stake! So, it turns out that this Long Island surgeon, frustrated with how the divorce proceedings were going, particularly that he is being kept from seeing his children, is requesting monetary compensation for the kidney he gave his wife to save her life in 2001. Allegedly, she began having an affair about 18 months after the transplant. Call me crazy but aren't gifts, as in the "gift of life", off limits in divorce...I could be totally wrong.

There are so many issues involved in this hot crazy mess. For starters, how can you cheat on the guy who gave you his kidney...to save your life?! Marriage, and any romantic relationship, is complicated. We obviously don't know the whole story. It may very well be that the marriage wasn't working to begin with. Should you stay married to someone just because they gave you a life-saving organ? I actually don't think so. That's manipulative. Relationships are what they are. Shouldn't she have had a heart and broken this off before the affair? Maybe she doesn't have a heart...calling all donors! (Sorry, sad organ donor joke).

The second issue is the motive for his request. He deserves being paid for his kidney because she didn't hold up her end of the marriage. I'm not sure how I feel about this. He says he doesn't regret his donation and that it was the happiest moment in his life. So why drag this into the divorce just to get some financial leverage? It's low.

I think these two should get a diagnosis of "cuckcoo". I would give my husband an organ in a...ha ha..heartbeat. If he cheated on me, I think I would just use this fact as a way of making him hate himself...over and over again. I don't think I would ask for the monetary value of it, though. That way I could remind him of how awesome I am and what a jerk he is to have lost me. Then again, it doesn't look like the economy will be picking up anytime soon. Who knows. (Just kidding, hubs!)