I had my 4th day of testing last week. It started out with another fasting blood test, so of course I was prepared to almost pass out again and feel crappy all day, but this one wasn't nearly as bad as the other other. There was only one tube to fill this time, instead of the 50 million they had to fill last time. This test was just to check my glucose.
Next up was a surgical consult. I met with Dr. Taner, who is one of the surgeons. Either he or his partner will be performing my surgery. He explained to me how the surgery will be done. At Mayo, they do a sort of "hybrid" surgery called hand assisted laparoscopic surgery. There will be 2 small incisions on my side where the laparoscopic tools will go in, and then one larger incision either right above or right below my below button where the surgeon will insert his and to assist the tools during surgery, and then he will remove my kidney through this opening. He drew me a very "high tech" picture of the abdomen and where everything is located, and how the kidney is attached to everything.
He explained the risks to me, which include bleeding, or accidently damaging another organ such as the spleen and having to remove it. If excessive bleeding occurs, there is a chance they will have to convert to open surgery, which is where they would open me all the way up, and the hospital stay and recovery time would be a lot longer. The Mayo Clinic has performed 300 surgeries on living kidney donors, and of those 300 there have only been 2 that had to be converted to open surgeries and that was because of bleeding. As far as surgeries where another organ or artery was damaged during surgery? He said that's never happened at Mayo. I feel pretty good about those statistics, but I am very surprised that they have only performed 300 surgeries on living donors. That number just seems so low! The last step for the surgeon is to look at my CT scan with the surgical team to make sure my anatomy will allow for a safe surgery. From first glance, it looks good, but they want to make sure my arteries and blood vessels aren't positioned in a way that would make surgery difficult.
After that, I had to attend a nutrition class. I thought it was going to teach me about what I should or shouldn't eat after having only one kidney, but instead the class was focused on people who are on dialysis and/or receiving a kidney. It did help give me a perspective on how closely people on dialysis have to watch their diet, as well as after they receive their transplant.
My last appointment of the day was with Dr. Wadei, to go over my test results so far. According to him, I'm in perfect health, and I'm an ideal candidate for living donation. He said they couldn't wish for anyone more healthy. My glucose is normal, my blood pressure is good, my cholesterol is good, all of my organs look good and are functioning normally, I don't have any diseases such as hepatitis, STDs, HIV, etc. He even said the level of protein that showed up in my urine was nothing to be concerned about, and it was probably caused by dehydration. He did request that I have an updated PAP, as it's been over a year since my last one. Even though at my last appointment they said I only need one every 2 years, Mayo wanted me to have one just to be safe.
They were able to get me in for a PAP last week. I guess it's a good thing I had one, because they found a cyst/polyp on my cervix. The nurse said they could biopsy it now, or wait 6 months and see if it had changed or disappeared. Of course I chose to have it biopsied, because I knew I couldn't be approved as a donor if I had that lingering out there. Talk about a painful experience! That was definitely not how I wanted to spend my Friday, but better safe than sorry. I keep telling myself that's nothing, and that if it were bad or cancerous, something would have shown up on one of the zillions of things I've already been tested for. But, there's also a part of me that's wondering if this is going to be something, and that's the whole purpose behind me going through all of this. Maybe that's why it didn't work out for me to be tested for Raleigh Callaway, and maybe that's why I've been unable to decide if I want to start a donor chain, or donate to someone in particular. Maybe I'm not meant to donate, and I was compelled to go through this because there is something wrong with me that I needed to know about. I'm not saying that be negative, it's just what I've been thinking about the last few days. With that said, I'm anxiously waiting to get the biopsy results back so that I can hopefully breath a big sigh of relief!
I have 2 days of testing left, and then it's a waiting game until the board decides if I'm approved! It's crazy to think that just about 2 months ago, this was not even a thought in my mind, and soon I'll know what the result will be!
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