Four little words

Over the last few weeks, I think I've experienced just about every emotion possible. Excited, anxious, nervous, angry, frustrated, annoyed, heartbroken, sad, overwhelmed, exhausted and everything in between. I've been sitting here staring at the screen for the last fifteen minutes, trying to figure out how to put into words how I'm feeling at this very minute. It's impossible. At 2:45pm today, I finally heard the four words I've been waiting to hear for what seems like forever.

You are a match!

I'm so happy to announce that my left kidney will be traveling (on a jet plane) to MN to be placed inside it's new home!

So much has happened over the last few weeks. It took forever to get my blood kits, my appointment at Mayo was mid scheduled and I fainted during my blood draw. Yep, out cold. After all of that, I recieved the sad news that I was not a match for my recipient. They had a reaction to my blood. Fortunately, they had another potential recipient lined up, so I did another blood draw and this time I didn't pass out. :) After a week and a half of waiting, I finally got the good news today! 

I don't know anything about my recipient, other than it's a male and he's at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. That could be all I'm ever going to know about him. I'm definitely open to the possibility of meeting someday, but he would have to want that as well. It is kind of weird to think about someone walking around with a piece of you inside them, and not knowing who they are. Not only am I saving this man's life, but four others are getting new kidneys all because of my donation. I am the start of a ten person chain, so a total of five people will be getting a new lease on life. That's incredible! 

As of now, I don't have a surgery date scheduled, but it will most likely be March 23rd or 30th. They try to schedule all of the surgeries in the chain together, and the caregiver for one of the recipients is out of the country so they need to find out when they will be back before we can finalize a date. I'll have my pre-op procedures done the Friday before my surgery, and then I'll be admitted to the hospital on Sunday evening because my surgery will be bright and early Monday morning, probably around 3:30am! It's done so early because my kidney will have a flight to catch to MN. There is a courier service who will look at flights once the date is set, and find the earliest flight from Jacksonville to Rochestor, and then they back schedule everything based on the time of the flight. The courier will pick up my packaged kidney from the OR desk and take it to the airport. They put it directly on the plane. If it's a direct flight, my kidney will ride in the cockpit with the pilot. I wonder if I can somehow get a photo of that? That's pretty cool! Once the plane arrives in MN, a courier there will come on the plane as soon as it lands and take the kidney to my waiting recipient at the hospital. If it's a non direct flight, the courier will travel with my kidney to make sure it doesn't get lost while switching planes. Now that would be an awesome job to have!

Now as soon as I have a date, I can start planning a kidney going away party! Don't laugh, I'm serious. :)