It is hard to fully grasp what has happened in our lives. On October 7th, my husband, Phillip, donated his right kidney to me.
Since surgery, I have been laying low and healing: no blogging and no internet, lots of naps and nourishing food. It is fabulous – I highly recommend a month of rest for anyone healing.
Now four weeks post transplant, my energy is returning, and I am excited to tell you about the transplant. Over the next three-or-so posts (it ended up being 6…yikes!) I’ll attempt to put into words just exactly what happened. We’ll start with the reason the transplant wasn’t October 1st.
The Delay
Our surgery date was originally Tuesday, October 1st. Both of our mom’s arrived on schedule that Sunday. Just as we were hugging and chatting, Phillip began to feel a bit queasy. He brushed it off as having eaten too much for lunch, but something was definitely off.
Monday morning while I was getting ready, Phillip was rummaging around for our thermometer. He laid in bed as the beep-beep-beep slowed time down. I walked in the room and he was devastated. He had a fever. His Sunday queasiness turned into a Monday stomach bug. While we were hopeful it would be short lived, we didn’t want to risk it and called the transplant center to let them know what was going on. For everyone’s safety, the surgeons decided to postpone our transplant until Phillip was better.
Fortunately, very, very, very fortunately, Monday, October 7th was available. Normally the transplant center is booked two months out for elective transplants, but on this particular week the surgeons decided not to attend a conference they had originally been scheduled for. We just had to make it one more week. This meant quarantine.
Our moms washed and sanitized every surface, sheet and blanket in our house. Phillip and I stayed on separate floors so that he wouldn’t pass anything to me. We didn’t go anywhere. Luckily, by Wednesday, Phillip was feeling better. We had a second pre-op appointment that Thursday to make sure we were ready for surgery. It was a nerve-wracking wait to make sure neither of us had a virus, elevated white blood cell count or anything in our blood samples that would push our surgery out further. Results were in by Thursday afternoon and we were both good to go. We wore masks to the hospital that day for fear of catching something else. Don’t we look splendid?
The weekend before surgery I was not feeling good: nauseous, anemic, out of energy, bruised and more than ready for a new kidney. I tried to put on a brave face because I didn’t want anyone to worry or feel bad. Sometimes life throws curveballs and we have to adjust our plans. This was one of those times. It wasn’t a great situation, and we all felt like we were tempting fate to get to Monday with everyone healthy enough for surgery. Since there was so much that we had zero control over, we placed our attention on what we could control. Phillip and I rested relentlessly. Our mom’s cooked, cleaned and went to the store. We passed time with cards, magazines and movies. It was one of the longest week of all of our lives.
My creatinine (a toxin our kidneys filter from our blood that is used to measure kidney function) was going up a full point every few days. Normal creatinine is between 0.4 and 1.3 mg/dL. Mine was 9.7 mg/dL (indicating 5% function) as I was wheeled into the operating room. I was only a few days away from needing dialysis. Monday could not have arrived soon enough.
On our way to the hospital:
More to come soon…