Mayo Clinic: Day 3

Today was fortunately not as long of a day. We are pretty tired! Today we started with the follow-up to my skin tests. They tested to see if my body had a resistance to yeast, TB, and tetanus. On Tuesday they injected a tiny amount of each into my arm, and today I went back so they could see if any of them had a reaction. The injection of the TB didn't get inflamed or do anything, which is good- it means I have never had TB, nor have I ever been exposed to it. The yeast one got a little bed red; the nurse said pretty much everyone has fought off a yeast of some sort at some time. The tetanus shot got pretty inflamed, and it is SORE. There is a tiny knot under the injection site. This is actually good as well, because my body remembered the disease from when I was vaccinated, and was attacking it where she injected it. I was pleasantly surprised, seeing as my last tetanus shot was 12 years ago in high school when I had knee surgery. Even though my body reacted to the test, I will still be given another tetanus vaccination before the surgery. The nurse saidn to put cortizone cream on the spot and it should start feeling better soon.

Our other appointment today was a surgical consult with Dr. Nguyen. He was a petite middle-aged Asian man; he had a very gentle & caring demanor about him which we really liked. Our consult lasted almost an hour; he didn't make us feel rushed, or like any of our questions didn't matter. He went over all the schematics of the surgery itself, told us in detail about all the risks, and also talked about my long-term prognosis.
He had a really cute Asian accent of some sort; I'm not sure where he was from. A few times when he was talking about finding me a really good quality kidney, he said "if we find you a really beautiful kidney" but he pronounced it "byooful keeny". It was adorable! So now we are referring to my potential donor organ as the byooful keeny.

He said he really wants to be able to find a living donor- the surgery's success is considerably better with a kidney from a living donor.
In our internet travels in the last few months, we had already learned that they leave the old kidneys in your body. Dr. Nguyen explained that removing even old, non-functional kidneys is even more traumatic to your body than a transplant. He said that over time, kidneys that have shut down completely will eventually shrivel up to about the size of a walnut.
Since I still have almost 20% of my kidney function, I asked him if this is advantageous. He said YES, absolutely- that the surgeons are pleased even if you only have 1 or 2% function left, because it still takes some of the workload and strain off the new organ.

So, the quicker we can find a living donor, the better. The more of my own kidney function that remains when I have the surgery, the better it will be for the outcome. Rick and I have been talking about some different ideas. We have a small handful of family members and close friends that we are going to test first as possible donors. If we exhaust all those options and don't have a match, we are thinking about having some Donor Drives. We are going to see if we can speak to our church congregation, and we are also going to speak at my Mom's congregation (she works & attends a pretty large Catholic parish on the Westside of Jacksonville). We will keep at it until we find someone!

Tomorrow we meet with the social worker in the morning- and that's it! Then we go back on July 2 for another full day of appointments. I am glad this week is over. We have answers to ALOT of questions that we've had for months, and while we are still really scared, we did put alot of the fears to rest.

Have a great weekend!