More tests

Today I went for my second round of screening. The day began early with a sonogram. The technician explained that she was checking the arteries around my kidneys to make sure there were no lesions or anything. Basically to just make sure there was a good place to connect the new kidney to.

After that I waited three hours to speak to my transplant surgeon. Our meeting was pretty short, he told me that I was "pretty straight forward." Besides having kidneys that barely work, i was in pretty good shape. He said that he expected to have a good surgery, with no complications and an easy recovery. I asked him what I should expect in terms of recovery, since, as he explained, even though the donor would have a laparoscopic surgery, I would have about a four inch incision. He said that hopefully it would barely scar, that they wouldn't be using stitches or sutures, but something else. Don't remember now what it was, I'll have to remember to find out. But anyway, the point is that he said after a while, I would barely have a scar. He mentioned that after about four weeks, I'll be well enough to go back to work part time, and then after two months, I'll feel normal. Maybe, he said, I'll notice that I have a ton of energy at the start of the day, but barely any energy by days end. He said that three months was the magic time that I can expect that I will feel like new. Fingers crossed on that one.

We finally decided that my father would be the donor. Even though my mother was a five point match, my father matched both DR antigens, which apparently is the most important of the three pairs (A, B, and DR). My little brother drove my father into the city. I'm totally glad he was there. I found them at the transplant center, my father had spoken to the social worker, and the transplant coordinator, I presume. While I went to speak with first the dietician, and then later the social worker, he went to go have his EKG, echo, and chest x-ray done.

My dietician told me that it would be hard for her to determine what kind of diet I would have until I got out of surgery, and had my medications prescribed to me. Since certain medications have certain reactions to the body, for example, raises your blood-sugar, it would be important to adjust my diet according to the meds I would be taking. But that she was sure it would be high protein, and lots of liquids.

The social worker mentioned two things that I was glad to know. Following the transplant, I would have to travel in twice a week for six weeks to have my follow up visits and labs. I would need to have someone drive me to the city twice a week for six weeks, and likely, taking the train would be out of the question. Thats going to be tough, finding someone to commit to something like that. Then the other thing was that I would be on alot of medication, probably like ten different things, so I would have to figure out how to pay for all of that.

I had to hunt down the right people to get me my EKG, echo, and xray. They were totally ready to let me go home without having it done. But I went first for th ekg, which was a lot like a sonogram on my heart, with little nodes attached. The echo, was similar, too. They attached little nodes to my chest and my legs, and hooked it to a tiny machine. And it was done in seconds. The xray was very fast too, I just had to stand in front of a machine with a front and profile shot.

That was it, that was the end of my pre-transplant screening. I spoke briefly with my coordinator, and she asked if I would be able to have the surgery done on 2/7! I was like, no way, thats in like two weeks. I can't take off from work until after march in any case. Plus, I want to have at least one trip away, at LEAST to florida.

So we'll see what happens next.