It’s still kind of weird to think that roughly a week ago, I started off my Wednesday with two (garbage) kidneys and enough anxiety to fill a 50-gallon trash bag, and yet now here we are some 8 days later, a total of three kidneys stuffed in my body, and at least one of them actually works!
It truly was a wild week of ups and downs – kicking things off at the hospital not sure if we were going to have to postpone because I had been carrying a small fever and aches since my final dialysis session two days earlier.
Thankfully, the doctors that oversaw my case ultimately decided that the safest thing for me was to proceed with the transplant, so they did that. I didn’t know until it was behind me and I had woken up that apparently one of my lungs collapsed near the end of the surgery because somehow I got a leak in the cavity outside of it, which filled with enough air to prevent my one lung from being able to re-inflate.
So I woke up in the Trauma ICU with a few extra tubes protruding from my body, including a line literally in my neck, which would’ve been scarier if I wasn’t on so many painkillers at that point!
My first real dose of pain came that day when they wanted me to move from the bed to a chair, and it was easily the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. Thankfully, pain-wise I did pretty good from there on out – the next day easily saw it cut in half to a 5 instead of a 10, and soon it really only hurt when I needed to pivot out of the bed. Eventually we did some walking in the hallway with a walker, and another day or two later I was walking without it, the pain now only hitting me when I hit certain positions and I can usually sit in one place without any pain whatsoever.
Along side all of the physical therapy, they also started scrutinizing my oxygen levels because they would be fine while I was walking, but randomly dip when I was just sitting and watching TV. Eventually as the other hoses began to get removed, they narrowed their focus on the O2 and found that it wasn’t hitting the levels necessary for sending me home with oxygen, and eventually after a lack of symptoms we had to say good enough.
I think one of my scariest times was last week when my new kidney hadn’t quite picked up its pace at processing urine and filtering out old toxins yet, to the point where they were considering putting a dialysis catheter back in so that I could go get an emergency session if necessary. Thankfully, my Creatinine and GFR continued to see tiny bumps that were more encouraging, so they said that was no longer necessary, which I was particularly grateful for.
Even today, there were new questions about my heart because I guess it was creating a bizarre waveform while I was sleeping, and only while I was sleeping! The cardiologist finally came by and explained that it wasn’t necessarily good or bad, just odd, which is a good overall summary of my health to date, too.
And so late this afternoon, on day #8 after my transplant surgery, they finally cleared me to go home and gave me a huge binder of information to read along with an even bigger bag of pills that I’ll need to take for the rest of my life in order to keep my new organ from feuding with my cranky body.
Admittedly it’s still really overwhelming, but frankly that’s why I’ve got the next couple of months off from work to adjust to new habits and figure out the best ways of taking care of myself to make this sucker last as long as possible!
Oh yeah, and I also literally go back to the Transplant Clinic three times a week for the next month so they can follow my labs and adjust my meds accordingly, so I still feel like I’m in pretty good hands.
I’m sure I’ll have much more to write in the future as my brain begins to decompress from all of this, so right now I just wanted to cover – it worked, I’m home, and I’m ready for the next mountain that life has for me to climb.
Well, metaphorically, anyways – I’m pretty sure I won’t be climbing anything larger than my bed for the near future while these latest scars in my torso take their time to heal!
Welcome to the next chapter in Scott’s life – here’s hoping that it’s a good one…