Post date: May 24, 2010 1:24:25 AM
If you haven't already heard, I received a kidney yesterday, Praise the Lord! We went to Timothy's K3 graduation Friday night and they called me right before it started. I went outside and the nurse told me that I was #16 on the list and they had a kidney that they wanted me to agree to cross match. The reason they wanted my permission is that the donor had a history of snorting cocaine and having sex in exchange for drugs. He didn't "shoot up" anything though. He tested negative for everything like hepatitis and HIV. The nurse said that there was a possibility that one of these diseases could be under development and so it would not show up on the test. The nurse said that he was considered high risk because if one of these diseases were under development it could develop in me from the kidney later on. But, she also said that he really was no different than anyone else, since we would not know anyone else's history and they could also test negative and yet have something under development too. I decided to leave it up to the Lord. If it was a match and the kidney was okay, then I would take it that this was the Lord's will. It matched and the kidney was okay. Becky's parents were in town for Timothy's graduation so it worked out perfectly that they would watch the boys and a couple from our church agreed to watch Arabella. They have watched her before and know how to use her tube pump. We ended up on the road about 12:10 am on Saturday morning. We arrived at the hospital at 3:30 am expecting to be rushed to the operating room. We weren't called to the operating room until 4:30 pm! The surgery began around 5:30 pm and the surgeon was done at 8 pm. I left the OR at 8:45 pm. I didn't wake up until they were wheeling me to my room. I remember being in pain and they kept hitting the bed against the walls and every bump hurt. I am on a bunch of medications that I hope will decrease once everything starts working. My creatinine was 7.5 directly before the transplant and 6.4 afterwards. This morning it was 6.7 so the kidney is still "sleeping". I am feeling much better now that I am not taking any pain medicine. It was making me nauseas and I am only in a lot of pain when I get up to walk, although I can work through it. My blood sugar was up due to the steroids they are giving me but it was down to 82 recently. My blood pressure has gone down too. I am hoping they will take out the catheter tomorrow because it is really weird. They are saying that I will be sent to the hotel on Tuesday and then I will be there for about a week. Thank you all for your prayers. I will try to keep this updated.