What a crazy day the first of April, 2008 was for me and my family. It had started with a simple phone call around 10 that morning. It was a number I didn't recognize, but knew from the area code that is was local. Imagine my surprise when it was the transplant team, telling me there was a kidney and I was up as a backup. Being April Fool's Day, my parents were skeptical, to put it nicely. But after handing Mom the phone so she could hear for herself it was the transplant team, it didn't take long before we were off.
First stop was at the hospital's lab. There's a large amount of blood tests needed to ensure that you're a match. And some of them take a few hours, so we spent a lot of the day waiting. After getting blood drawn, I went to see one of the nephrologists (kidney specialist) for a physical. While I was here, I noticed that one of my fellow dialysis patients had also received the call. She had been waiting for this moment for longer than I had and it felt weird and wrong to be up for this before her. So during the physical, I told the doctor that I'd rather she get it for the aforementioned reason. The doctor broke out in a huge grin and was silent for a few seconds before saying, "You didn't hear? There are two kidneys and both of you are getting one."
The year and a half prior to this had been the most difficult, trying time of my life. Few things could be worse than a kidney failure diagnosis. Especially if you had been completely healthy beforehand. I think I've written about this period in a different blog, but it's probably something I'll revisit later. So hearing the doctor say that was like nothing I'd ever felt before. I'm not eloquent enough to give it proper form.
After getting the all clear from the doctor, it was back to the waiting game. I had called a few close friends to tell them about it. (Incidentally, one such friend I had talked to the previous night about how frustrating it all had been. There's a process involved with getting on the transplant list, but once that's done, it's all waiting. Seriously, all you can do is wait.) We -meaning my family- were taken to my room and told that my surgery would happen immediately after my other dialysis patient had had hers.
In the meantime, I decided to watch the last few episodes of season three of Lost. Funny enough, the very instant the finale was finished, they came for me. Emotionally, I was still somewhat in shock. Things were rapidly changing and my life would once again get flipped over. I went through a myriad of emotions as they were wheeling my bed through to the operating room. The OR itself was cold and full of personnel garbed in white. They moved me to the operating table and one of the individuals introduced himself as the anesthesiologist and tried to tell me about what drugs he was going to be pumping through me, but I was distracted. On a counter against one of the walls, there was a styrofoam container and the surgeon was pulling something out of it. From my vantage point, it looked like a large plastic sandwich bag filled with fluid that could have been blood and a roughly fist sized mass of tissue. Which was, of course, a kidney. That was the last thing I saw before they placed a mask over my mouth.
Some hours later, back in my room, I woke up and made a somewhat hilarious scene with my nurse, as was chronicled in the first paragraph. What a crazy end to a crazy day. Here I am, six years later, and with no complications from the transplant. There have been some hiccups here and there, but any potential issue was caught and addressed early by an extremely talented and dedicated team of doctors and nurses. To say they have my gratitude would be the understatement of the year.
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