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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

My Kidney Donation Journey Part II

In February I traveled to New York to do further testing to donate one of my kidneys, and got to meet my wonderful Recipient and her Family.

After a quick, uneventful flight from Chicago to NY, I got to meet my wonderful Laure and her wonderful husband, Kevin as I entered the baggage claim area. It was one of the best meetings/hug sessions of my life!

I had the great pleasure of being their guest for dinner that night at their home with their family, which was a beautiful welcome and nice kick off before I had to get a good night's sleep to prepare for a busy next two days at New York Presbyterian.

The following two days were filled with various appointments to meet with my Nurse Coordinator, a Psychiatrist, my Nephrologist, Counselor, Surgeon, and a financial coordinator. I had everything from more thorough blood tests to an EKG, Cat Scan, psych eval, to watching a very informative video on the surgical procedure, health risk data, and effects on pregnancy/fertitility. All of this, in addition to a very detailed account of day of surgery, happenings immedietly following surgery, and days after surgery were explained to me by my team. (Your donor team is completely seperate from the team of your recipient, and they are there for You and Your Needs and Health)

Full disclosure, the two days were exhausting, but you know what? I kept my eyes on the prize. This was not for me, this was for someone else who goes through much much more than a paltry two days worth of medical testing at a hospital.

All that was left now was for my case to be brought before the board and my donating approved so that we could go ahead with the transplant.

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