63 hours

In about 63 hours, my surgery will be starting. There have been many times throughout this journey when I have felt things were taking so long and that this moment would never come. Now that it's here, it feels like it happened so fast and I find myself wishing I had just a couple more days to prepare. My parents and sister made it safely to FL, I've got some meals prepped, my house is mostly clean, my advanced directives are done and I'm doing last minute laundry as I'm typing this. I guess everything important is taken care of! Tomorrow will be spent finishing up a few hours at work, then stuffing my face before I have to start fasting at 6pm for bloodwork on Tuesday morning. :) 

I found out earlier this week that all of the final crossmatch testing came back negative, so we are all good to go as long as no one gets sick between now and Wednesday. I also went in this week for some final HIV & hepatitis testing, and everything came back negative. It should be noted that I did not find any of this out from my coordinator, because she decided to leave me hanging and take the week before my surgery off, without telling me. I literally had to call the MN hospital to get an answer. I think Mayo will be getting a nice long letter from me after this is all over. I can't help but wonder how many more living donors there would be if this process was better.

I've keep in touch regularly with my recipient, Todd, and we've been getting to know each other. From what he tells me, he and I are very much alike. Just more proof that this all happened the way it was meant to! I can't imagine what he is feeling right now. Not only is he undergoing surgery, but his wife is also. She is continuing our chain by donating to a stranger. She'll be having her surgery about the same time as mine, and then Todd's will be later that evening. I'm so excited for Todd to get his new kidney and to start having all good days!

Over the last couple of weeks, I've finally started to feel nervous. I'm not really nervous about the actual surgery, but more for the recovery. I like to know exactly what's going on, and what's going to happen so that I can be prepared. When I start to wonder how I'm going to feel when I wake up and am missing one of my organs, I have no idea what that's going to feel like and that makes me nervous. I know there is no way to prepare for that. I will say though that my nerves have calmed down a lot over the last few days. I think I've been so preoccupied with people visiting that I haven't had much time to sit and dwell on it too much. That's a good thing! 

I've got a morning full of appointments on Tuesday, a couple hour break for lunch, and then back to check in at the hospital. I'm sure I'll have lots of downtime that night, so I'll post another update then...and that will probably be my last post while I still have 2 kidneys!! :)