It’s true! Exactly one year ago today, I went under the knife to have my incredible sister-in-law’s kidney tucked into my body wherever they could find room, and it ended up going very well!
…except for the whole lung collapsing and almost killing me-thing and all, but hey, I was asleep when it happened, so don’t go looking at me…
A little under a year later, circa the end of June this year, I went back to that same hospital by myself to have my old, disgusting, football-sized kidneys removed in what they call a bilateral nephrectomy, which surprisingly ended up being a little harder to recover from than the original transplant surgery! They ended up being something like 10-12 pounds together, a number that I honestly was expecting to be higher based on how I had been prepped and how big my pregnancy belly has gotten, but ultimately I ended up down roughly 20 pounds from when I weighed in before the surgery to when I weighed in just before leaving.
So … do you want to see ’em???
I know that anyone who stumbled upon this post either from a medical background or because they also have Polycystic Kidney Disease wants too because I felt the same way, so here they are – in all of their alien-cyst-laden glory…
Click here if you do – I’m hiding them behind this thingy in case you’re squeamish or don’t want to see my diseased bodily organs…
Honestly, it was kind of important for me to actually see the organs that have been trying to kill me for the last decade or so of my life, and while they could’ve been a lot worse, these were the demons that I was dealt … or at least two of them, anyways!
I know it’s hard to tell the size of these even with “the ruler included in the second one,” but if they were roughly football-sized, consider that a football is about 11″ long and a healthy kidney is about the size of your fist, or 5″ long; weight-wise, a normal kidney weighs a little over half a pound, so even if mine were smaller than we all expected, they were still double the length and ten times the size of normal, healthy kidneys!!!
To summarize PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease), basically there’s a genetic defect that causes all of those cysts to grow all over each of the kidneys, which drag down kidney function, and so the kidneys in turn grow bigger to try and overcompensate. Obviously that only works for too long, and as your eGFR (Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate) drops, that tells doctors how far along in the disease you are, when you need to begin dialysis, and otherwise when your kidneys are ready to fail.
I think I was around an eGFR of 60 when I first started learning about kidney disease a decade ago. 60 put me in Stage 3, whereas 90 is good, healthy functioning kidneys.
I started dialysis somewhere around 10-12, which is Stage 5 where kidney failure is imminent.
And as of about two weeks ago, I was at 65 again, however it’s important to note that this is influenced by the recovery from my last surgery. Shortly after my nephrectomy, I was between 85-95, which was ideal. The way one of my doctors explained it is, and it’s supported by other labs, that for the last year, my new kidney has been functioning with my garbage kidneys still in the loop, so even though they weren’t doing much, they were still there, being all diseased and part of the flow of blood and all, whereas now it’s just the new kidney running the show, which is going to take a little getting used to, just like other parts of my body will get used to actually having some breathing room inside of me now that the old kidneys are gone!
So I feel good, I feel hopeful, and I feel very fortunate that not only did I get this second chance, but I also got it a lot quicker than most people have to wait for a donated kidney. I really try to take that to heart because I still see people at all stages of this process when I go to doctors offices and the transplant clinic for my follow-ups. I remember how rough dialysis was, and even trying to stay employed during all of the stress and fatigue that comes with it. It’s insane to think that anyone could be fighting for their life and continuing functioning the way that they always did leading up to all of it.
But I really think I’m in a good place now.
I’m closer with my family because I’m technically not working and on disability for the next year to figure out what I want to do next, I have so much less stress from leaving my former career behind after 20 years, and ultimately I feel like now I have a crystal clear view of what’s really important in my life.
With that said, I’ll leave you with one last photo – this one of the new kidney that we’re celebrating today because for the last 365 days, it’s been dutifully filtering my blood like its predecessors sadly had long since forgotten how, and with one year under our collective belt, I hope that we’re celebrating this special memory together for decades to come!
