Hope Is Where The Heart Is: My Battle Against End Stage Renal Disease

Chp 7: The Call

On November 9th, 2012 at approx. 12pm, Sandi and I went out to pick up some lunch before I hooked up to the machine. As I checked my phone, I noticed a couple of messages on my voicemail from the hospital. I called the hospital back to find out that a kidney was available for me. At first, it didn't register with me since I got a call last year, but turned out to be a false alarm. Still confused, I noticed Sandi talking on the phone with my mom hysterically as she couldn't believe the news. The coordinator told me not to eat or drink anything before arriving at the hospital. The thought of a fresh start being without the need of dialysis was great. Frantically, Sandi scrambled around the room packing some clothes to take for us as she will be by my side throughout the surgery.

At 2pm, I arrived at the hospital for preparations before the surgery. The surgery was scheduled for 8pm so it was a long nerve wrecking wait. My mind was going crazy thinking about if anything would go wrong. As every hour went by, I would get blood drawn from me while the nurses monitored my vital signs. The longer I waited I started to feel sick since I haven't did an exchange all day. I had some of my family members keeping me company in the pre op room. I felt like time slowed down as I started to panic waiting for the word. Nurses kept me updated about the arrival of the kidney, and all the last preparations to make sure there isn't any issues.

At 9pm, I got the last go ahead to go into the operating room for surgery. I broke down to tears once I started saying goodbye to everybody before going into the room. I remember seeing Sandi crying as she didn't want to let go of my hand before leaving. I was ready to come out on the other end as a new man looking forward to the next chapter of my life.

As I laid on the operating table, the surgeons asked a couple of questions to verify my operation making sure the information matched. It was a surreal experience seeing one of the surgeons preparing the kidney I was about to receive. The last thing I remember was counting down to one before I passed out.

Day One

Saturday, November 10th, 2012

As I wake up blurred eyed, I hear a prayer being said to me thinking that I'm either dreaming, or didn't make it. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to regain focus of my eyesight with no luck. I realized the voice I was hearing was my Aunt Patricia. I realized that I'm in the recovery area before being transferred to my room. I end up falling back to sleep since I was drained from the pain and sedatives. I opened my eyes to see that Sandi was by my side with a big smile on her face.

As I began to speak, my voice was very rugged due to me having a breathing tube in my throat during surgery. I was slowly recovering trying to figure out what time it was which was about 1am in the morning. Sandra told me a couple more family members stopped by to visit when I was in the recovery room. My assigned nurse for the night arrived to check on me. She started me on my new medications that I would be taking for the rest of my life.

The amount of medications I have to remember to take felt like a grocery list to keep in check. The nurse showed me everything I needed to know. She connected me to a morphine drip if I needed more medicine all I had to do was push the button. I had two IV connections with one being in my hand while the other was in my neck. If I were to get the AV graft as recommended by my nephrologist as an extra line I wouldn't have to worry about an IV hanging out my neck. I had a urinary catheter which was connected to my bladder in order to collect and measure the amount of urine I produced.