Please Sign Here ---->

Today I signed on the dotted line. I signed and initialed and signed and initialed and then the doctors signed and then the coordinator witnessed and then.....the deal was sealed. It was like signing for a mortgage.

And its official.

My kidney will be oh-so-gently placed within Nathanial very very soon.

My day started out very early. Geoff and I had to be at the hospital by 7:30. I had been fasting for 12 hours prior to the appoitment so they could test my blood sugar first thing. yay...more needles. What I didn't realize, was that after the initial blood drawing, they were going to trap Geoff and I in a closet sized windowless room for the next five hours with nothing more than a TV and two chairs. B-O-R-I-N-G! A lab tech explained that I would drink this extremely sugary drink (that tasted like orange soda) and then they would draw my blood an hour after the drinking. And then two hours after drinking. And then three hours after the drinking.....you get the picture. I don't mean to sound like a baby, but I am going to whine just a little. I have been sick the last two days...killer sore throat, headache, body aches...just yuck. So prior to todays visit, because I had to fast, I couldn't take any medicine. Also, this meant no coffee for me this morning. Me feeling sick and not having my morning coffee made for a very unpleasant and uncomfortable morning for me. And my poor husband was trapped in there with me! Not only was he trapped in the small, overly heated room with a grouchy wife, but the lab tech actually thought he was my dad! (Geoff had just a rough of a day as I did, bless his heart)

By 12:45 I was shaky and I needed food and cold medicine badly. The lab tech finished the final draw just in time for me to run down to the cafeteria and get a baked potato before heading back up to the sixth floor of St Francis. I have to admit, I was a little anxious to meet this doctor. I have heard he is quite the stiff, old fashioned type guy that doesn't like to BS. I felt quite the opposite upon meeting him. Dr Shields made Geoff and I feel right at ease. He first went through a flip chart that begun like this: Renal Failure Options. Option #1 Do Nothing = death. (note the picture I took of the lovely flip chart above) We went thru the proceedure and he answered all of the questions Geoff had for him. We told some jokes and I found out that when they remove my bottom rib, they will let me actually keep my bone for a souvineer!! HOW TOTALLY AWESOME IS THAT!?!?!?!!!!! I was a little surprised to find out I wasn't the first one to ask if I could keep my rib bone. I just have to think of a good way keep the bone after I get to take it home. I doubt Geoff will let me mount it and hang it on the wall. I dont think it would look good hanging around neck. Oh, I'll think of something....

After meeting with Dr Shields, we met with the neprologist who is very concerned about my gestational diabetes. Although, my glucose test came back almost perfect (even better than most normal people) he still had his doubts knowing I had gestational diabetes. He recommended that I see a diabetes specialist prior to the surgery so that he can look over my records and make a recommendation. Just between you and me, even if they say I am in a higher risk catagory for diabetes, it won't stop me. I've made it this far with no problems, I'm sure I can skip some sugar and exercise regularly and be just fine the rest of my life. But I understand, from a neprology side of things, why the doctor wants to at least educate me.

Its been a long day. And I'm so glad to be back home! Now I can take my cold medicine and then go watch my daughters concert and then try to get some rest.

Peace Out Bean Sprouts~
Hilary

Processes, Processes.....

Yesterday, I had to get up a little early to start my day. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but yesterday was Columbus Day. A glorified holiday in the banking world. Its a day that all the bankers and post office workers get the day off, while the rest of the world works. October is the beginning of a series of these little holidays for those who work in a bank. Making this the perfect time of year to be scheduleing so many tests and trips across town to the hospital.

My appointment yesterday was two-fold. I was to turn in my second round of pee jugs (which also means bloodwork-gag!) and I was to have my visit with the social worker. After my last visit with Mark -the renal donor coordinator- he told me I was down to the last few schedulings. He told me I would meet with the social worker, then the psychologist, then Nathanial and I would meet with the surgeon and the nephrologist to schedule THE day.

I wasn't quite sure I needed to meet with a social worker. Actually, I didn't even know what the social worker's role was. Nathanial told me she was a super sweet lady and I would like her. I honestly haven't met one person that works in the renal department that I haven't liked. But, I'm getting off track now. I had to be in the renal department of the hospital by 8am. Driving there takes about 30 minutes during rush hour plus I had to consider parking and walking through the crazy parking garage and getting to the 6th floor. And anyone who knows me knows I HATE being late to anything. I decided to leave the house around 7:15 which meant the kids were on their own for getting on the bus and getting themselves out the door at the right time. That isn't too much of a big deal for them. They have had to do that several times lately due to all of my testing and appointments. On a side note, the kids haven't complained one single time. They are the best little cheerleaders! They always give me extra kisses and hugs in the morning when they know I am having a day faced with needles. And then the first thing out of their mouths when they get home that evening is always "how did the doctors go?". They are just as excited to have Nathanial better as the rest of the family.

I arrived at the hospital at 8:03 according to my car, but I always have my car clock set ten mintues fast to trick myself into always being early. Drives Geoff crazy!! By the time I got up to the renal office to meet with the social worker it was right on the dot, 8 o'clock. Beth Smith, the social worker, came out to greet me. She was a tiny little brown haired lady that imediately made me feel comfortable. She couldn't find an office for us to meet in so we wandered up and down the hall for a few minutes looking for an open space. All the while, my pee jug was splish-sploshing around in my bag. We found an open office and she told me to make myself comfortable. Basically, her job for the day was to give me a sort of interview to deterimine if I really was willing to be Nathanial's donor for all the right reasons.

She asked me questions about financial issues. She asked me questions about my kids feelings about the surgery. She asked me how Geoff felt. She asked me how long I had thought about doing this. She asked me how my employer was going to handle my leave of absense. She asked me who was my support system and who would take care of me after the transplant. She talked with me about what it was that happened to Nathanial to get him to where he is now. She asked me what I would do if it turned out that the transplant didn't work. All these questions and topics were discussed over the course of about an hour. Apparently she approved of my reasons behind why I am doing this for Nathanial, because at the end of the interview she said when the transplant team met and they asked her for her 'yay' or 'nay'on continuing with the procedure as me being the donor, she was going to give me a resounding 'yay'.

YAY! One more obsticle down!

After visiting with the social worker I was sent to the lab. The lady who works the front desk from the lab now knows me by name. 'Hi Hilary', she greeted as I walked (as slowly as I could) through the door of the lab. I sat my bag down and pulled out my pee jug to walk over and give to her. I was sick and tired of hauling that stupid jug around with me everywhere for the last 24 hours so that was at least a good thing! She had me scribble down my height and weight and what time I started and ended collection. Then I had a seat to wait for the BS. BS= blood sucker.

The idea of me getting blood drawn doesn't panic me as much as it did even a few weeks ago. I'm actually very proud of myself for how brave I was yesterday. The BS came to call me to the back room and my stomach didn't even turn like it normally does. The nurse was a very funny guy this time and cracked a lot of jokes. He was young and energetic and very different than the nurses I'm used to. As he was poking around looking for a good vein I mentioned that I was still bruised from the last time they drew blood. He told me he could use a different vein if I wanted him to, but I declined the offer and told him just to use whatever vein was going to be the easiest for him. He said back to me,'do you really mean that? I can use whatever vein is easiest for me? Because my patients tend to get a little uneasy when I tie this rubber strap around their neck." See what I mean? He was funny! ....and if he thought for a second that he was going to use a neck vein of mine to get blood out of he wasn't just funny....he was CRAZY too!!

The blood drawing went well and I was out of the hospital by 10am to go enjoy the rest of my Columbus Day holiday. My next appointment is with a psychologist tomorrow. I guess they don't want to use mentally unstable people's kidneys?? Either way, she is the last person I will see prior to actually scheduling the transplant!! My kidney is anxiously awaiting his new home!

Until next time~
Hilary

SUCCESS!!

I would like to start out tonight's blog by letting everyone know I am not pregnant. Yes, yes, I know I have no uterus, but apparently it was still on the agenda for one of my tests today. So now that we have that cleared up we can proceed to how the rest of the day went. I'll start at the beginning....which was early, early in the morning....around 4:30 am.

I believe I blogged last night about being proud of myself for drinking a cup of hot tea and a cup of juice right before bed. Yes, I was doing great with the consumption of fluids, just entirely too late in the evening. I woke up at 4:30 and had to pee so bad I barely made it to the rest room. I did all the right things since I was still in my 24-hour pee collection stage. Even though I could barely keep my eyes open I put the tray in the potty, and then I stumbled through the dark house to find the fridge and pour my 'specimen' into the jug. I replaced the lid and then back to bed I went. No biggie. Until 6am, when I was supposed to collect my last specimen, but couldn't because I had just went at 4:30. I know this sounds miniscule (sp?) but I was really freaking because the renal coordinator had really placed some pressure on me to do everything just right. I was supposed to collect my last pee at exactly 24 hours after my first pee. If I screwed it up, then the whole test was shot. If this was the only issue, I think I would have been okay. But there was one other issue where I temporarily forgot I was saving ALL my pee and when I stepped into my nice warm shower......well.....

Geoff and I arrived at the hospital early enough that we could grab some Starbucks before proceeding to the death chamber, I mean...the lab. He got a nice white chocolate mocha (my favorite) and I was still on the clear liquid fast so I got hot tea. Actually, that was fine for me because I may have thrown up anything I ingested at this point. Nerves were killing me. We headed to the third floor where they smiled and greeted me and asked me to pee in a cup. Apparently, the gallon jug of pee I brought with me wasn't enough. I didn't balk, I have learned not to piss of the lab workers, as they are the ones in charge of sticking needles in you. Its best to be as sweet and pleasing as possible to anyone working in the lab. They gave me my hospital arm band and then let me wait in the waiting room just long enough to really think about everything. I got out my Bible and read a little bit to kill some time. Scripture always seems to calm me. I read a verse to Geoff that I had found the day before. It had struck me as very funny. When the people were wandering around in the desert with Moses and they were griping about only having manna to eat God replied to them saying something like "oh, Ill give you more to eat. I'll give you some meat. So much meat, it comes out your nostrils! Then we'll see what you have to gripe about". That has nothing to do with the waiting room, but I really like that little part of the Bible story. And it made me temporarily forget about the fact that just around the corner was a nurse waiting to suck out my blood with a giant syringe.

Once I was called to the lab a very sweet nurse with a whole handful of blood viles asked me to have a seat. Lol. Me....have a seat....in the lab. Good one. Geoff chuckled to himself while I quickly informed her of my habitual fainting when my veins are being probed and she was kind enough to have me lay on the table. I crawled up on the flimsy table/bed/thing with the paper lining and layed down. I was feeling pretty good until the nurse mentioned that she didn't have enough room to lay all my viles because there were so many to draw... GULP!!! She had TEN, yes TEN empty viles. Trying to be cool, I mentioned I could just scoot closer to the wall the bed was up against and she could lay the viles on the bed. I scooted right over and then noticed there was blood spattered all over the wall! I looked and Geoff and made eyes at him to look at the wall and he gave me his "gross" look back with his eyes and curled his lips. Too late to bring up the blood spatters at this point because the nurse was tying that horrible piece of rubberband like thing around my arm. She wanted me to make a fist while she tapped my arm to fish for a good vein. Okay, this is the part where my legs start jumping around uncontrollably and sweat starts popping out of my forehead like an NBA player. I will skip the next few details. She got the ten viles. I did not die.

On to the 4th floor. They call this section of the hospital the Heart Center. Sounds cute doesn't it? I was very disappointed when I arrived to find it was just a boring floor like all the rest and no one had thought to paint it all cutsie with hearts and love quotes. I knew this floor would be easy and I was right. I was doing an EKG on this floor. They made me take off my shirt and lay down. The nurse put little stickers all over my chest and one on each foot (the foot thing perplexed me, but I didn't want to ask her about it because the nurse seemed a little slow.....). She hooked wires to each one of the stickers and then turned on the machine for 10 seconds. A piece of paper came out of the machine and then we pulled the stickers off and I got dressed. Easiest part of my day.

Lastly, we made the trek to the radiologist. We checked in, sat in the waiting room and watched a little Rachel Ray, and then they called me. Geoff and I got up to head down the hall and the nurse turned to him and told him he could wait in the north waiting room or the west one but he couldn't go with me. WHAT!?! This test is the whole entire reason I needed him with me!!! This was the dreaded, evil test of doom!!!! He reluctantly took my purse and my bag and kissed me good bye while the nurse told him it would only be about an hour. She guided me to a little room where she instructed me to take off my cloths except for my panties and shoes and put on one of the oh-so-sexy hospital gowns. I stripped and made a joke about wearing my panties that said "lets make mistakes" on the butt. I thought it would be funny to leave the gown open in back so people could read it. The nurse didn't think I was funny. Thank goodness I only had that nurse for one x-ray, because a nurse with no sense of humor pretty much sucks. She just did my chest x-ray that lasted only about 20 seconds.

Once the chest x-ray was over it was time for the test. THE TEST!! The test I have been dreading since Thursday when I found out about it. The test I actually was worried about a year ago when we learned about it in some kidney class we took. Oh man. The closer I got to the IVP room, the weaker my knees got. The nurse had me take a seat while she went over a few details....was I pregnant, do I smoke, yada yada yada. The whole time my legs were bouncing around and I was sweating. Right next to her little piece of paper on a clipboard, was three GIANT syringes. When I say giant, I mean, the same size as the cardboard on the inside of paper towel rolls. Yes, that big. No exaggeration. She was explaining how they would hook up the IV and then lay me on this table and inject me with these iodine syringes (pointing to the giantuous ones on the table) and take pictures of my kidneys and bladder processing...blah blah blah. I really didn't hear much after the part about the IV. When my head started rolling around she got all big-eyed and asked me if I would be alright. She told me to take some deep breaths and mentioned something about not being comfortable doing my IV and she was going to go get another nurse to help. Great...two nurses. This typically means one is going to kind of hold me down while the other sticks me. As both nurses returned my hearing shut off and my eyes started going black. I mumbled that I needed to lay down and I just kind of dropped to the floor. I didn't faint, but I needed to quickly feel the nice coldness of the radiology floor. It was so nice and cool. And as long as I was down there on the floor, no one could stick needles in my veins. I know that doesn't sound very logical now, but at the moment it seemed the only option. The nurses were very nice and I totally feel bad now. I warned them though. I warned everyone, from the receptionist, to the radiologist in the first room, to the nurse walking me down the hall. They all knew what they were getting into ahead of time! The nurses got me off the floor and moved me to the table where the x-rays would be taken. They tilted the bed so my head was down and blood would rush back to my cranium. Apparently, that was their last ditch effort to keep me conscious. A cold rag was placed on my head as they explained that they wanted me to just relax for a little while and they would call in the IV specialist team to do the insertion. Right, relax, okay sure.

Actually, I did relax. In fact I almost fell asleep because the IV specialist team took about 30 minutes to show up. The tech was awesome and she was sweet and mild. She told me she does 100 IV's a day and she's very, very good. She didn't give me a chance to balk, she just walked right over, eyeballed a vein right off and wiped it off. I was praying the entire time and I think God was actually with me right then. Because as she told me she was administering the lidocane I didn't even feel the stick. In fact, I didn't hear her pull the paper off the IV needle (which I usually pick up on), I didn't feel her poke the IV in, and I didn't even feel her tape it down. No, that's a lie. I did feel the tape further down my arm near my wrist when she taped that. Her name was Mary Lee and she was an angel. I praised her and told her I was requesting her for the surgery day!! I have never in my whole life experienced a smoother IV insertion!!! Prayer works!!

They took the pictures of my kidneys working and my bladder filling and then they let me pee. Thank goodness!! I had all that hot tea from Starbucks 4 hours earlier, PLUS the IV fluids...I had to go!! Side note: it was so nice to just pee and not worry about aiming for a tray :) They took one last picture of my empty bladder and my day was done!!! I had made it!!! I was past the hard part!!!!!

Geoff and I went up to visit Mark and go over all my results. Technology is amazing. He had all my lab and all my pictures from the dye in my kidneys and everything in just a few minutes!! He showed me my healthy little heart. He showed me my healthy little lungs. He showed me my healthy little blood test results. He showed me my healthy little kidneys. And he showed me my happy little bladder. And he told me my tests all came out great. DID YOU GET THAT? He said my tests all looked great!!!!!!!!! Stress over! Operation Kidney Transplant ready for action!!!!! I meet with a psychologist next Wednesday and I meet with a social worker next Monday. I have one more 24 hour pee test just to make sure they are both conclusive of the same results. Then we meet with the nephrologist and the surgeon and the rest will be history.

All in a days work!