On Saturday, November 30, I finally got the call I've been waiting for.
I was at the top of the list for a kidney transplant. It was a perfect match, and CMV negative. The donor was a little bit older than me, and died of a stroke. I myself was not in perfect health that day, as I had thrown up that morning. Weighing all the pros and cons, I said "hell, yes!"
Well the transplant surgery was more or less a success: The new kidney is doing a little bit of everything that it should, but not a whole lot. The doctors say it has to "wake up" still (the recipient of the other kidney had a full recovery around day 10).
The doctors and staff at Washington Hospital Center are really top notch, although the building and equipment are aging. On the day I received my new organ, they did 5 kidney transplants. I spent nearly 2 weeks in a private room which was just 10 feet from the nurses' station. It was nice getting such high priority, but the constant intrusions, beeping and alarms were really starting to take their toll - sensory overload. I wasn't getting any rest, and the food started to really disagree with me. After a while, being in the hospital was more of a hinderance than a help.
It did not go without complications. On day 3 I had a lot of internal bleeding and bruising from a hematoma on the new organ which required a second surgery and general anesthesia. They tell me that post-op my heart stopped and my lungs started to fill with fluid and I had to be re-intubated, spent 24 hours in ICU after that.
One of the things they do to try to wake up the new kidney is keep my blood pressure higher than normal, between 140 and 160 on the systolic, to force more blood through the new organ. They also wanted to keep me "wet," which meant an extra 15 LITERS of fluid. Even though the kidney wasn't doing all it should, they were very reluctant to give me dialysis, for fear that my BP would drop and the kidney would go back to sleep, permanently.
It wasn't until day 12 that my B.U.N. levels started to come down which was the last benchmark they were looking for, so I was discharged Friday evening with the onset of some severe edema (swelling). Well it was only a matter of hours before I became short of breath, and my progress started to reverse. At 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning I got up to use the bathroom but couldn't catch my breath. Panting and wheezing I called 911 and took an ambulance to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda where I was treated for pneumonia due to "volume overload." They gave me dialysis 3 times in 3 days, taking off a total of 10 Kg (10 liters), and that was no picnic.
I'm back home and I think I'm at a happy medium right now. I've still got swollen piggy feet but my stomach isn't distended anymore (it was so bad I had to cut the elastic waistband on my PJ's). My metabolism and appetite have returned, and while my kidney output is down a little, the quality seems to be really good. For the past 4 years I've been forbidden from drinking orange juice or eating foods high in potassium, and now I'm actually potassium deficient, so I'm enjoying a long-awaited glass of OJ and counting my blessings.