#3 More workup and a big jug of urine.

So yesterday I had to do a 24 hour urine collection so they could see the function of my kidneys and how they process protien. I arrived at the hospital at 8:30 this morning to turn in my pee. When I get there and hand them my 1500 cc's of pee, they hand me a little cup and ask me to pee in it. It struck me as odd after handing them that big jug. heheh. Then I waited around in a room for about 20 minutes, and a nurse came in to draw my blood. 18 viles of it. I wasn't allowed to eat beforehand, so I was a bit nervous. But I did fine, no fainting. I wonder if there is any blood left inside of me. After that, it was off to meet with the social worker.

What did I learn talking to the social worker? I learned that my blood work and and urine results will be back early next week and in plenty of time for the next meeting the whole transplant team has every tuesday. Because of the Holidays, the next presentation meeting isn't until January 5th. Every Tuesday all the nurses and doctors get together and present each case of recipient and possible donor, talk about them, check out stats and results, and have 1 of 3 results. Either everything looks good, and we are approved, there might be some wacky results and/or further testing is requested, or we are denied. I was upfront about my tobacco use (yes I am in the process of quitting) but have messed up a bit recently. If we are passed then I will have more work up done. I originally was going to have a CT Scan, Angiogram, Pulminary Function test, and chest xray today, but cause of the holidays they decided to wait. I guess I will hear more on January 6th. I just had a chest xray and pulminary function test not too long ago at the VA, which yielded excellent results. I might be able to skip that step. If we are moved forward then we are entered into the Paired Donation Network or the United Network for Organ Sharing aka UNOS They do what is called Match Runs every couple of months. This means they take all the different cases of people and pairs and put them in a computer and use a fancy program to organize a big transplant swap. Sometimes they are small, but the larger collaborative transplants seem to be the new big thing in the Donation World.

The social worker asked me lots of questions about my life, work, family, etc. And also explained a lot about the actual surgery which I already knew about because I have done my research. I think the technical term for what happened with the social worker is PsychoSocial Evaluation.

I also learned that if we are matched into a massive transplant effort, that any one person can back out at ANY time up until the time that the anesthesia is administered. If someone backs out, the WHOLE transplant is called off, regardless if it's 4 or 50 people This is a bit scary, but I think if someone was going to back out, they wouldn't wait till this far along. But it could happen.

I had to read and sign a 7 page consent form today to be a living kidney donor. I passed all my evaluations with flying colors. The social worker told me I was the most informed patient she has ever dealt with.

That is all for now. I was advised of two more websites that I should check out.
www.livingdonorassistance.org and ustransplant.org. Haven't checked them out yet. But I
thought I would share them anyways.

Oh I almost forgot......Afterwards, I took my mom to the doctor to have her leg checked out. She has MOHS surgery a week ago on her leg that went almost down to the bone. She was complaining it hurt worse than before and her leg was so SEVERELY swollen. We arrived with no appointment, and were let back immediately. They took the miles of bandages off, and when they did you could smell it. GROSS, it was fire engine red, gross, pussy, and her skin graft had been eaten away. So it was nastily infected. I wanted to take a picture of it, but she wouldn't let me. I told her it would help describe her story better on here and might help someone prepare for seeing it themselves in real life when it happens to their loved ones. I wasnt ready to see it. She hit me with her crutch. so no picture. She described it best when she said it looked like a dog got ahold of her leg and started eating it like it was a raw steak. A quit script of Cipro antibiotic, 2x a day for 14 days should clear that up. She cried when she stands up, it hurts that bad. And a higher dosage of pain medication. We will see how she is feeling tomorrow after her second dose of antibiotics.

She is feeling up a bit because my brother, his wife, and two kids will be here any minute for the holidays. I hope they handle the shock of her condition well. The past 5 months she has deteriorated quite a bit. Tomorrow she does dialysis again.