Pre-op Day

It is currently 10:00 pm the night before our surgery. Anna and her husband Rick just left our hotel room but we will see them in a few hours. I need to check into the hospital tomorrow morning at 6:30 am and even though Anna doesn’t need to be there until after 7:00, she is insisting that we walk into the hospital tomorrow together.

It’s nearly impossible to genuinely express how I am feeling right now. I’m not feeling anything that I expected. First off, I thought I’d be starving at this point. I was allowed to eat breakfast this morning, but have been on an extremely limited, liquid diet ever since. I was convinced that I’d be delirious with hunger pains by now, but currently, I’m not even hungry. I was lucky to have Anna wake up extra early this morning and make me a big, hearty breakfast to kick start my day. I did get a little hungry around 6:00 this evening, so I sent Anna and Scott off to eat dinner (where I couldn’t see them) and I hit the gym here at the hotel, exercise always makes me lose my appetite for a bit.

I was also expecting to feel a good amount of anxiousness by this time of the day. Maybe I’m in some sort of strange state of denial, but I’m not scared and I’m not apprehensive, I’m just focused. After our long day of pre-op appointments, Anna and I walked around downtown Seattle this evening. We were gone for several hours and we just walked and talked. We even got caught in a small rain shower, but we continued walking and talking. It was nice spending some time with her like this before the surgery.

I’m currently flushing out my system, literally. Today in pre-op I was given a bottle of Citrate Magnesium to drink this evening. For those that don’t know, this little cherry-tasting concoction cleans and empties your bowels. The surgeons need as much room as they can get to cleanly remove my kidney, so flattening everything out down there is necessary. As much as I’d love to go for a stroll right now, I’m stuck in my hotel room until I’m thoroughly empty. This is not the most fun process, but at least it keeps me distracted from other things. Oh and for the record, Anna is able to eat and drink until midnight and she does not have to ingest this foul drink. If she wasn’t certain that I had her best interests at heart, she is now.

On Friday, I expect to be prepped and ready for surgery by 8:20. They will take me in first but will not make any incisions until Anna has checked in and has been prepped for surgery. We met with many different people today and most folks gave us a different estimate for how long the surgery will last. Most of the guesses came in between two and four hours. Anna’s surgery will start approximately an hour after I begin. From what I learned today, we will be in adjacent surgery rooms and once my left kidney is removed, they will walk it across the hall and implant it into its new home. At that time, they will clamp off my insides and stitch me up. Anna will have a four inch incision cutting diagonally across her lower stomach on the left side. I will come away with four laparoscopic incisions on my stomach/side and one large four to six in incision below my bikini line.

It doesn’t sound like Anna and I will see much of each other tomorrow. She may have to spend the first night in the ICU until the medical team is certain she can be moved to a standard room. Anna gets a full and private suite, I might get to room alone, but I also might have a roommate. We won’t know until tomorrow.
I repeatedly asked if Anna and I could share a room, but they have a strict policy to keep the donors and recipients separate in case of kidney rejection. For me, this is just more motivation to get moving after surgery so that I can visit Anna in her room.

I am being told to expect to stay in the hospital over the weekend and possibility into Monday. Anna will likely stay in the hospital for an additional two-four days.

Tomorrow this journey will change for us. Up to this point, we wondered if this kidney donation would ever come to be. There were days when I thought the world (and our bodies) were working against us. In the beginning, there were days I was afraid Anna might not make it to this place. But tomorrow I get to save my best friend’s life. Tomorrow I will wonder about different things: I will wonder if her body will accept my kidney, I will wonder if my pain will go away, I will wonder if and how our friendship will be altered. But I will no longer wonder if this transplant will happen. I will know that we did everything in our power to make a difference. I have to have trust and faith that these efforts will be enough.

Oh and in case anyone was wondering, Anna and I both love flowers J and you can never go wrong with chocolate in my eyes (don’t even think about that with Anna though).

Somebody will update this spot for me tomorrow as I doubt I’ll be in any shape to blog, but I promise there will be some kind of update. And there was a nice article in the Seattle Times today on our kidney donation, you can read it here if you are interested: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/eastsidenews/2004001309_grin08e.html