First Donor Evaluation Appointment at UWMC

3-26-2011

Yesterday was my Evaluation trip at UW. I had six appointments on the docket, and I was prepared to be put through the ringer. I had initially planned on going myself, since I had expected it to be a long and boring day in the hospital. In the time between setting up appointments and actually going I had received a packet in the mail asking for the person who will be caring for me to attend the meeting with the Donor Advocate as well, so my husband Shane decided to come along.

On Wednesday Night, 2 days before the appointment, I received the following texts from Cherina:

“Hey I was just thinking about you today. Thank u so much for taking the time to go to uwmc on Friday :) hope all goes well.”

“I’ll call you sometime this weekend if it's okay to chat? I'd like to plan dinner. My parents want to meet the person that’s willing to save my life. Only if u r comfortable. Absolutely no pressure.”

“…Appreciate u as corny as that sounds! Night”

I was moved by how much she cares. I think it would be hard not to just expect this from someone. Not to think that of course someone was going to do this and feel like it is owed to you. Cherina, on the other hand is the complete opposite. She can’t believe someone is willing, and doesn’t at all expect anyone, to just give up part of them to save her life. I am again so amazed by her and her humble attitude towards all this. I can’t imagine what it would be like for me if the tables were turned. I don’t know how I would handle it, hopefully with as much grace as she has.

The truth is that I think about her every day though. I wonder how she is feeling and pray that she can stay off dialysis as long as possible. I pray for her family and friends too. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be her mother, knowing exactly what she is about to go through and not be able to protect her daughter from the same fate. I hate it when my kids fall and get a bump or scratch, I can’t imagine what it must be like to wait with your daughter while she is on a National Transplant list.

Anyway, back to my appointments on Friday. I had a fasting blood draw (with urine test too! Yippie!), an EKG, Chest x-ray, a tuberculosis test, an appointment with a nephrologist (kidney doctor) and meeting with the Donor Advocate and coordinator of the living donor program at UW. My only scheduled appointments were for 1:00pm and 3:00pm and everything else was walk in. Since I had to fast for my blood draw, and since I get very grouchy when I don’t eat, I wanted to head over early and get that out of the way. Also, I was thinking that each test was going to take a while and thought that it might be necessary to be there way in advance to get everything done by the 3:00pm appointment so we could return to the little ones after we were done.

We took an 8:45am ferry, paid for by the NLDAC, and were getting my 13 vials of blood drawn by 10am. I ate a bagel, went and had my EKG – which only takes 10 seconds by the way, seriously 10! – then down to have a chest x-ray. Two pictures and I was done. In each department I walked right in and right out. It took us longer to find the different departments than it did to have the procedures done. We were finished with all of the tests that we could do by 11am and had two hours to kill.

It was a beautiful spring day in Seattle, so we walked through campus to the book store, had lunch at a pizza place on “The Ave”, again courtesy of NLDAC, then treated ourselves to some Haagen–Daz ice cream. After all, we did have $113 to spend on food!

While I was still checking in at the counter in the transplant department of UWMC, I was called back for my appointment – again, amazing service! I was weighed (131.1 Yeah!!) and checked for height (just under 5’4” she said. Bummer, I was sure I was 5’4”!) They took my blood pressure, temperature and pulse then in walked Kami with a few papers to sign. Apparently they take the selling your organs thing very seriously and I had to sign another form saying that no one had offered me money for my healthy kidney. I was asked a few more times about prostituting my kidney throughout the appointments. She told me that I would be having all of my appointments in the same room.

Dr. Kendrick was the first up. She is a nephrologist and a very smart lady. You can tell that she has always been very smart and certainly was good at her job. No candy coating or beating around the bush, very thorough, to the point, and had very sensible shoes. She ran though the risks of kidney donation, took a family health history and asked about my lifestyle. She reassured me that pregnancy after donation was very safe. She said that the one kidney should be functioning at the rate of my previous two after two months so they suggest waiting six months before getting pregnant, just as a precaution. She said that sometimes your uterus can get so large during pregnancy it puts pressure on one kidney, and because of that you might have increased blood pressure, or decreased kidney function, but that is rare. She also said that there was a study that followed a group of women’s pregnancies before and after their donation and they did have a higher incidence of preeclampsia but they were not sure if that was due to the kidney donation or if it was because they were older, which also increases your risks. She said basically you just have to tell your OB on your first appointment that you have one kidney, then the rest of your prenatal care should be the same. Nice. Shane and I were feeling really good after that. Bring on the surgeon, I am ready to go!

Paige was the next person to come and talk with us. She is a Donor Advocate and doesn’t know Cherina and most likely won't ever meet her. She wanted to know everything - why I want to be a donor, if this was my decision, all about my family, where I live and where I grew up. She did a psychological exam asking if I have ever wanted to hurt myself or if I was irritable – yes I am irritable! I have 2 kids under 3 and work full time. I am a math teacher, of course I am irritable - I told her I was not more irritable than the next person and on we went on to drinking, drugs, mood swings … the list goes on. Looks like I passed though - does that mean I am sane?

Toilet hats and urine cups in the nephrology bathroom.

Finally Kami came back in and went over a few more things. She gave me 2 jugs and a hat, for the toilet not for my head, and instructions on how to do two 24-hour urine output tests. I have to pee in the toilet hat then pour it into the jug, which is to be kept in the refrigerator, twice. I think this might be the worst part. At least the jugs are brown and you won’t be able to see my pee through them. It might be fun explaining to the staff why there is a gallon-sized brown jug in the fridge at work. Ahh the glamorous life of a kidney donor! Kami also told me that they were doing the crossmatch today. The whole donation hinges on the crossmatch test, if it is positive then Cherina can’t accept my kidney, if it is negative it means one more trip to the UW for a CT scan and a meeting with the surgeon where they tell me about the surgery, etc. If I have two healthy kidneys in the CT scan, normal looking uriters and nothing else weird then we schedule the surgery. I will be praying for the next 2 weeks while we wait for the crossmatch to come back, part of me is scared that it might not work out, but I hate to doubt God like that. Optimism at the forefront, I am hoping that the three to six months that Kami said it takes from that date to surgery date is as close to three as possible.

I will try to spare you the gory details of the pee test, but you know me. If there is a good story it MUST be told! You can hope for no good stories. Until then, Pray for negative crossmatch, and all of the rest of my tests to come back normal.

~Kara