One thing that I’ve learned about kidney transplants in the last two weeks is that there isn’t just one approval, there’s a zillion of them.
Two weeks ago, it was the approval from the Kidney Transplant Clinic’s board deciding to take on my surgery after reviewing about a dozen different tests from both myself and my donor.
Then a few short days later, it was the financial authorization from my insurance agreeing to actually pay for the half a million dollar, lifesaving surgery … which almost threw a hiccup when they said they wanted me to redo a bunch of testing as well as some new testing, only to go ahead and approve it anyways a day later!
Today’s round of approvals were in the form of pre-op testing where I had to redo a select handful of tests to make sure that nothing has changed that could impact the surgery … and thankfully, nothing has so far.
The next two weeks are kind of a quiet period where theoretically nothing should happen, but I have to be on high alert and let them know immediately if anything at all changes with my health. It’s also not the time to go out and get a shiny, new vaccine or change my meds because everything hinges on the snapshot of me in this moment.
And then one week prior to surgery, my donor and I will both go in for one last blood draw to verify that we’re still a match with tissue typing and a bunch of fancy biology stuff that was well beyond my aptitude in college.
Then comes the transplant itself.
It’s definitely starting to get all the more real the closer we get. Today I met with several different doctors and nurses on the team and went over everything from what to expect from the surgery, recovery, and beyond. It’s … alot … to the point where I think it’s important to quantify it not as reaching a goal, but instead getting over one hill with another new one to challenge me right on the other side.
One described the recovery process by saying, “I don’t expect for you to feel better on day four than you do today, however by week four I expect you to say that you feel much better than you do today.”
And I can accept that – in essence, I’m trading one set of challenges with dialysis and fatigue and exhaustion for another set of my body learning how to use this new organ without trying to kill it, while also physically recovering from having my belly split open.
It does sound like they will not be removing my giant, old kidneys at this stage – namely because it’s too dangerous to do everything at the same time, however I’m still hoping that we can revisit the topic once I’m healed so that I can give exercise and good health a real, honest shot this time. Baby steps…
I’ve been thinking more about the impact and what this transplant means to my future so that I can try to put it into words for my donor before the actual surgery. No idea how my wife or I are going to get through the time leading up to the OR without crying, but I think in truly profound moments such as this, that’s to be expected. If I can hold back my tears while I’m saying goodbye to the kids so as to not spook them with the inherent risk of surgery in general, that’s good enough for me.
We also desperately need to get this house cleaned before then so that I don’t have tripping risks every three feet when I come home, so that sucks!