Some final thoughts, as I go into week 8 of recovery

Now that I'm back at work I've had several folks ask me about my little kidney adventure.  I have therefore had time to work up a standard response, which is typically to shrug off my involvement and redirect to how Logan is doing.  Here are some things that I don't say and maybe should:

• Modern medicine is truly amazing and we all need to give a shout out to science, please. 
• The first week of recovery was absolute hell, more so than I ever imagined.  I know that it's different for everyone, but in my case it was absolute hell.  The rest of the recovery was actually not too bad at all, except for that afternoon where I had a tickle in my throat and it hurt so much to cough that I had to lie on the carpet in a fetal position for 15 minutes.
• People are really, really nice and generous by nature.
• Hospitals are really quiet and creepy over a holiday weekend.  Think about that scene in The Walking Dead when the guy wakes up from his coma.  It's kind of like that, minus the zombies.
• It's an absolute travesty that there is no real financial assistance for donors.  We estimate that between travel, hotel, and lost wages we are down well over $5000.  We are lucky to be in a position to have planned for that financial hit, but what about others that would not have been able to afford it?  It's quite telling when the kidney donation pamphlets talk about your financial assistance options in terms of friends holding a benefit to raise money.  Unacceptable and my goal for this year is to write some people about it. 
• Thank goodness for health care reform and the fact that in the future insurers can't give me trouble about having one kidney being a "pre-existing condition" (seriously, it's happened to others).
• I don't regret a moment of this adventure.  I feel lucky to have been in a position to be able to do it.  
• Many, many people could put themselves in a position to be a donor, especially if you do it for someone local.  Maybe there is a kid out there that could use your kidney?  Just sayin'.

I'm feeling pretty much 100%, and Logan is doing great, eating up a storm (except for meat...yay,  vegetarian kidney!)

Screw you, Percoset

I decided yesterday that I'd rather be in pain than be nauseous for hours.  For that reason, I've stopped taking the Percoset and have moved on to Ibuprofen.  I simply cannot seem to find a prescription pain med that doesn't make me feel like hurling my guts out. Unfair!!

The Ibuprofen works okay.  It doesn't take the pain "almost away" like Percoset, but dulls it somewhat.  I'll have to live with that for now.

I've been thinking about my surreal time in the hospital and realized that I was not asking for enough pain meds from the nurses.  They asked me to rate my pain level 1-10, and I'm sure that I was lowballing it, not because I was trying to "tough it out" but because I had no idea what was normal or appropriate. It was driving Alan crazy but he wasn't sure if he should challenge me or not.  In retrospect, I should have told the nurses whenever it hurt and let the them tell me that I'd had too much.  Thank goodness for the night nurse who simply walked in and stated "here's your dilaudid" and put it in the IV.  The other nurses (bless them, they really were good and attentive) let me call the shots.

Logan's progress

You may be curious about how my nephew is doing. The answer is "reasonably well." The kidney liked him pretty much right away. What I think complicates things is that his body and all of the functions we associate with eating and drinking are now completely upside down for him. He is doing for the first time many things you and I take for granted. That means a whole lot of new problems, but hopefully problems are about learning to do things for the long-term (such as eat) that won't require re-learning later. My sister can chime in if I'm not interpreting correctly. This transplant was a good thing for sure, but send your good wishes his way while he gets through these new challenges.

One Week Later: Hurray for Abdominals!

My primary care docs often have told me how great my abdominal muscles are.  I attribute this to years of running: you can't really run without developing your abs.  It just kinda happens.  After running my marathon in June I probably had some awesome abdominal muscles, but after the marathon not only did I cut way back on running but decided to continue eating as if I was still training for the marathon.  Bad, bad idea for those abs.  Makes me wonder if this recovery process would have been easier had I had more discipline from June through October...but as I joked (badly) all the way through October:  "Give me more cake.  I could die on the table!"

One week post-surgery, I can sit down, get up, roll over, etc on my own, with only occasional requests to Al to help me up.  Slightly painful but not debilitating.  I also ate a full meal last night for the first time since last Tuesday, which I think is momentous.  Haven't been able to stomach anything more than liquids and small food bits for a week.  I'm also down to a single Percoset every six hours or so, which I think explains why I can eat more.  I think this is remarkable progress, but there are still several things that I just can't do without being all pathetic:

• Cough, or even clear my throat.
• Laugh, which is difficult when you live with Alan who doesn't even know when he's being funny.
• Sit in a chair for longer than 5 minutes or so (I'm reaching my max as I type this).
• Stretch.  This one is harder to deal with that you might imagine.

I know these things will all get easier, and apologies to those who have had abdominal surgery and to whom this is nothing new.  I'm home now, which is A-W-E-S-O-M-E.  My couch, my jammies, my tea, my television.  This should help my abs tremendously.  I'm going to take my first Percoset of the day and watch Ellen.

Day 47. Still no sign of land.

Hey-o. blog nerds. It's Alan again, which is probably obvious, since Sue is far to nice to ever call her friends 'blog nerds.' We're out of the hospital and in the hotel. And by in the hotel, i mean ALL-in. Sue hasn't left the room since Friday, other than to wander up and down the hallways like a cupcake-pajama wearing extra in The Shining.

So far, the weekend has entailed sleep, sleep, more sleep, waking up to take pain meds, eating a couple of crackers, and then going back to sleep. Seriously, i've never seen sue sleep this much ever. But on the plus side, all that log-sawing is doing a world of good. Each day is better than the last, and this afternoon has been spent lying on the bed, reading the paper, doing crosswords, and swearing at our various fantasy football teams.

Sue is hoping to get out and about sometime tomorrow -- maybe for a last Minnesota meal at Campus Pizza down the street. Then it's onto the airport Tuesday afternoon, which is going to be all sorts of interesting:

Security: Ma'am, i need to do a pat-down.
Sue: Oh Christ, no.
Security: Please raise your arms and--
Sue: If you touch me, i will kill you to death. ...Seriously.

So if we end up arrested for airport terrorism, at least you know what happened.

Transplant complete!

The kidney is out. Wooo!  Unfortunately, that means Sue is lying in bed doped up on Percocet, so this blog entry is being brought to you by her husband, Al.

The surgery went as well as could be expected. Into the hospital at 5:30, change into a gown with no ass, then get wheeled off to an operating room. (i was surprised to see that the gowns still hang open at the butt. Really, modern medicine? You can replace an organ but you can't sew a thirty cent robe? But i digress.) After that, it was three hours of nervously pacing around a waiting room (me) or lying passed out on a table while strangers loot your internal organs (Sue). After that, she was wheeled into a room and i was allowed to join her.

Good points of the week so far:

1) Everyone is alive and well, and Logan seems to be taking the kidney well.
2) The room is a single, so i was able to stay with her
3) There's a lot of football on today, so we're able to keep ourselves distracted.
4) The staff is friendly and supremely competent.

Lousy points of the week:

1) Surgery hurts. A lot. Sue is as tough as they come, so when she winces, i know it's no joke. She's bearing up remarkably well, but it's still hard to see.
2) Hospitals are noisy. Lots of beeping and clicking and general mechanical sounds, all interspersed with some lady down the hall who can't stop moaning and yelling the phrase "No one is going to touch my butt!" ...We didn't ask.
3) They brought me a chair that folds out, but i was too dumb to fold it out, and spent the night sleeping in this weird pretzel shape.
4) Said sleep was fitful at best for both of us, mostly because people keep coming in every hour or so to inject drugs, draw blood, replace IVs, and do other medical stuff. All important, of course, but distracting.

So...yeah. There ya go. Hopefully Sue will feel more perky in the next few days and provide an update from her own fingers. Thanks to all for the letters, texts, emails, and other general messages of support. It's been nice.

It's the left one

Heard today that the left kidney's the one to go. Will have three incisions, one 3-inch vertical and two small horizontal. Good thing I wore my baggy pants.

Another good thing? That we left Seattle when we did, before snowpocalypse 2010.