Now comes the hardest part of the whole ordeal for me........ waiting.
I'm done with the bloodwork (for the most part). I'm done with the urine collecting. I'm done with the xrays and the IV's and the radiologist and the therapist. I'm done with the social worker and the EKG. I'm done with the phone calls and the coordinating my schedule and the trips to the hospital. Now all I have to do is wait.
For those of you who don't know me very well, I'll fill you in. I'm not a very patient person. I tend to jump into things head first as quickly as possible. Dad used to have a saying - think first, then act. As often as he would tell me that, somehow I have always ALWAYS done everything in my entire life the opposite. I tend to act first and then think about it (after its too late). While I don't claim this as a very good method, I seem to have survived okay this far in life. I have gotten myself into a few messes.....I once sat our row of hedges on fire as a kid because, without thinking first, I was lighting and throwing fireworks into them. My friend and I once decided on our lunch break to go and get our hands pierced in the little fleshy part between our thumb and forefinger (not very convienant for a banker). I have had the cops call my parents in the middle of the night because I was using their vehicle, and without thinking, I parked it in a towzone while I went and partied. I once moved to Kansas City on a whim, without the financial ability to actually succeed up there, and had to move back only three months later. You get the point. I'm not proud of these things, but I'm drawing a picture here....
So yesterday as I was leaving the psychologist office, I was thinking to myself about how we could just have the surgery tomorrow if we wanted. I mean, all the tests are done. Nathanial is healthy now. WHY ARE WE WAITING?!?!?!? Lets get this show on the road already!
I get that its a process. I get that the doctors want to thoroughly go over my medical records before making the final decision. I get that Nathanial should attend one more of his 'advanced kidney recipient' classes. I get it! But at the same time....every day this is put off is another day things have a chance to go wrong. I don't want to be a debbie downer, but one can't help but think of Nathanials health. If he gets a cold, he'll be put in the hospital and it could delay things for weeks! If he gets an infection, same thing. What if I get H1N1 in the meantime!?
Here is the procession of what is left before surgery:
*my medical records have to arrive in the renal department and Dr Shields has to go over them
*Nathanial has to attend one more 'Advanced Renal Transplant' class (scheduled for October 20th)
*Mark, the coordinator, has to schedule a time that the surgeons can meet with Nathanial and I to decide on the actual date of transplant (I was told this meeting probably wouldn't take place until the last week of October-boo!)
Thats it! See how close we are now! OH man! Everybody please pray for Nathanials health between now and then pleeeeeaaaaaaase! In the meantime, I'm going to keep taking my vitamins and exercising everyday. I'm going to use the hand sanitizer and wash my hands everytime I shake someone's hand at work. I'm going to get plenty of rest and I'm going to eat my veggies. Hope that does the trick!
Showing posts with label radiologist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radiologist. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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!
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!
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