Kidney Transplant #2

April 13, 2021

Hello all! It feels good to be back on this page after a month and a half of a hiatus, but now that I’m feeling good and have been recovering for a week, I think its time to share my overall health and what this kidney transplant means to me. I would also like to dedicate this post to my cousin, Michael Kelley. For without his selfless sacrifice, I wouldn’t be here with a brand new kidney and a brand new chance at life.

As I wrote in my last post, I recieved the call March 11, 2021 that I had a new kidney waiting for me. For the past month, I’ve been preparing for this surgery and tying up loose ends so I can go on my three month recovery without having to worry about work or bills, etc. This also came at a time when I was just hired at a new company so that was very interesting to deal with, but luckily my new boss was very understanding and I am greatful that he has confidence in me to allow me to continue working for him.

Surgery was Tuesday, April 13th. Michael, my cousin, is my indirect donor. He didn’t directly match me, but he was good and healthy enough to make it to the swap program at the Loma Linda Transplant Center. This means there are two recipients and two donors. Michael would match an unknown recipient who then has a donor that would match me. So, Michael and the other donor ended up saving two lives on April 13th. His surgery was to be done first thing in the morning meaning we had to check in to the hospital at 5:00am Tuesday morning for Michael’s 7:00am surgery time. I had to be there for them to monitor my potassium level so that it wouldn’t be so high. Unfortunately for me, I had to wait in pre-op until the kidney got there… which they had estimated to be around the late afternoon/early evening (4:00pm-6:00pm). Little did I know I’d have waited much longer than that.

My surgery began at 9:00pm that night. The kidney hadn’t arrived until an hour prior. They never explained what had taken so long, but logically many factors could have contribued to this delay. My donor could have had complications in taking the kidney, flights could have been delayed, LA traffic, all sorts of things could contribute to how long it took for this kidney to come. Thing is, I was supposed to fast for at least 8 hours before surgery. I ended up going 24+ hours without food or water because of this delay. Needless to say, despite this being a happy day, I was a little grumpy by the end of it.

Finally, at around 8:00pm, they came for me. I just remember it was really quick. They wheeled me to the OR area, made me wait in the hall for about 10 minutes, and then let me in to the room. I remember looking around and seeing everything was made of metal and I could see a large bowl that two surgeons were working in at the end of the table I was on. The reflection on the ceiling was blood red and they were snipping away and preparing it and I knew it was the kidney. I asked one of the doctors if I could see it and recieved a very passionate “No.” So as they slid the gas mask on my face, I kept my eye on the ceiling trying to get as much detail of the kidney in my head as possible. The metal on the ceiling was distorted so I couldn’t truly see it, but it made me feel better to know I caught this glimpse despite the surgeon’s “No.”

April 14, 2021

I woke up in immense pain. I know I was wailing and crying but I feel like I was crying before I fully woke up. I just remember a guy doing an ultra sound on my new incision and not so gently either. I don’t remember anyone helping or giving me pain meds but I do remember the guy and he was emotionless. Just doing his job without caring that he was causing pain.

The rest of the day was a painful blur. My nurse was really nice and did her best to keep me comfortable, hydrated, and painfree. That first day I was pretty much drugged all day just trying not to move around. In the afternoon, my parents came by taking turns to visit one at a time (due to COVID restrictions). They sedated me again right before the surgeon came in to explain that the ultra sound came out and that one of the kidney arteries was kinked… or twisted and they decided to go in again to fix it. So in the afternoon, I went into surgery again. They repositioned my kidney to make it flow again and I woke up again in immense pain. They had a female ultra sound tech come in to make sure everything was ok and she definitely did a much gentler job going over the incision and trying not to cause so much pain. They sedated me again and I was able to sleep through the night (with the exception of the night nurses coming in every two hours to take my vitals…)

April 15-17, 2021

Every day was a little better physically than the previous in terms of pain. The first two days were excruciating but the following few days was bearable. Pain was minimal until they made me get up from bed to walk around the nurse’s station. Walking was excruciating and extremely slow. For someone like me who lived an active lifestyle, I felt frustrated that I couldn’t move. But I had to remind myself that I just went through two surgeries and that my body was working very hard to heal as quickly as it could to get me back to normal so I have to be patient and let my body do its thing.

I saved my pain meds for after my walks around the nurse’s station. I wanted to not rely on my pain killers as much as possible so that when I was discharged to go home, I wouldn’t be hooked on them. I was counting on my high pain tolerance to get me through this journey and the first two days I felt no shame in bringing on the pain meds. But as the days progressed and my pain level decreased, I felt it was time to try to only take pain killers when I absolutely needed it. Of course being in the hospital I don’t have much control over scheduled medication hand outs so at night time when they came to give me my nightly round, I was grateful for the benadryl they gave me. Benadryl might not be that big of a deal to a lot, but it definitely feels so nice going in and gives me such restful sleep the first few hours of the night (which is much needed when they come in every hour or so to take vitals throughout the night).

Despite the state of my traumatized body, I already felt a huge difference in my health. Before transplant, I was experiencing a lot of symptoms such as anemia, high blood pressure, muscle cramps in my legs, restless leg syndrome, vomiting randomly, over exhaustion, weakness, swelling in my legs, migraines and body aches. I was constantly cold (since kidneys regulate body temperature and mine was failing). My last labs from Kaiser two weeks before transplant came out showing that my kidney function went down from 12% function to 8% (creatinine was at 6.5). Dialysis was just on the horizon, and if I didn’t have this kidney waiting for me, they would have placed me on dialysis and I would have had to quit my jobs. Thank God I had a kidney lined up. Immediately after transplant, these symptoms pretty much disappeared! My creatinine is now at 0.9 (which is around 80%-90% function). I havent had any leg pains. I havent needed my injections for my anemia. Blood pressure is slowly regulating back to normal. I have so much energy now its incredible how tired I used to be all day all the time. I haven’t thrown up or had a single migraine since transplant. All my swelling went down and I am back to my normal weight again. MY APPETITE CAME BACK! I am eating everything now (all healthy foods of course. I want to keep this kidney kicking for a long time). I am now experiencing what its like to be too hot and need the AC now which is weird since I always used to be cold. Its a weird feeling going out in the sun now and actually starting to sweat when I havent sweat like that in years. These are things I can appreciate now and I’m enjoying every part of it. Swelling is completely gone now which I am so happy about because upon getting discharged, I came home and saw this fat water balloon staring at me in the mirror. 20 lbs of water I gained from surgery and I thought it was going to take all of recovery time to get rid of it. But thankfully, it took a single week before all my water weight came down and now I can honestly say I’m too skinny! My normal weight has always been about 105-110 lbs depending on the time of year and right now I’m sitting at 102 lbs. I’m not necessarily complaining, but I can see how boney I am so I will be trying to gain a few pounds to go back up to 105 ish.

I am so grateful to God that I was able to gain a third chance of life. I feel so motivated and energized to get things done for my own personal happiness. I have spent a lot of my time pleasing others and making sure I was liked but that has gotten me nowhere. Before transplant I had learned a lot of hard lessons and started work on putting myself first and now that this transplant has happened, I just want to live a beautiful and happy life. I want a life of adventure! I want to drive throughout the country, explore the national parks, hike my heart out! I want to fall in love and have my adventure partner travel with me. I want to own a house in Ventura, get a puppy and a kitten together so they grow up and love each other. I don’t believe this will be hard to obtain but I know I have to approach life with me in the center of it and worry about whether I like someone or something. I’m taking care of my mental health and will place my happiness as my first priority and see where that takes me. It’s still a work in progress since I know I need to be kinder to my body. Life is about progess and bringing yourself happiness. God is good and I will not let this new chapter in my life be wasted again. Time for adventure! Healing first and then adventure.

Thank you for stopping by! I’ll keep everyone updated on how everything is going of course so please stay tuned for more posts!