Well, yesterday was a roller coaster of emotions for sure. We arrived at the hospital, I dropped Amanda off with her bag, then parked and came in myself. I thought I knew the hospital well, but after a sidewalk was closed, I found a new way to get in. On the way into the unit, I saw a lady from the cafeteria who would come and take Amanda’s food order. She wanted to know how she was, then asked if she could come say hi. I let her know the room number and let her lead the way. She spoke about how good Amanda looked and wanted to know if she was ok with a hug. The nurse and her trainee were getting vitals and blood quickly after. The nurse asked if it was Amanda’s first time getting called in, which made me a little confused; this would make sense later.
The surgery resident came in to go over things while the nurses were working. She spent a while talking with us. Amanda didn’t have any questions, and the resident mentioned how calm she was. Of course, if you’ve been following us a while, you know I had questions! Not sure if the resident liked me asking anything; she never looked at me, only at Amanda. After the nurses finished drawing the blood, and the resident was done, it was just a waiting game. It wasn’t too terribly long before the kidney team NP came in to give us the bad news. I heard wrong and thought she mentioned the cross-match was bad with the antibodies. What she did say was that the initial donor kidney biopsy showed some abnormalities, and the surgeon rejected it.
It was a blow, a big one. Even though this all happened much sooner than we had anticipated, we were there to get a kidney. Turns out false starts are very common with kidneys. The coordinator didn’t explain to Amanda that this wasn’t a for-sure thing. She was told they needed to put eyes on it, but other than that, it was good to go. I guess we didn’t realize they needed the kidney biopsy results beforehand.
We learned a lot on this dry run. We will be much more prepared for the next one. We also need to resolve some logistical issues with our get-ready plan. We’ll chalk it up as a learning experience, a very emotionally taxing one. One of my friends said there’s a better one coming, and that is exactly what I left feeling: that the right kidney is out there, and what is coming next is better.
The NP gave us the option to leave right then or wait for the kidney labs to come back. Sometimes they find patients need an extra round of dialysis, or sometimes else needs to be adjusted. We were a little stunned and just processing. Amanda looked at me, and I said we might as well wait to see. I also asked the NP about the false start, with hearts that can mean you will get one quickly after. She seemed to think that wasn’t the case with kidneys. Mentioning other cases, she said she’s seen some get one quickly, others after months, and some with five false starts before they got the right one. All I could think of about the five false starts was ‘Wow, I’m not sure we can afford that many, emotionally or financially!’ Within 30 minutes of the NP leaving, the labs came back normal.
The discharge experience was easy, thank the Lord. Discharges suck from all hospitals; we’ve only had a few pleasant ones. They pretty much came in, took her IV out, and said, ” You’re good to go.” No paperwork, no wheelchair ride, nothing. To quote a saying from my middle school days, they pretty much said, ‘See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!’
It was a heartbreaking walkout. We really weren’t talking much. Of course, I was making wisecracks like “This was a hell of a way to get me back up here!” I told Amanda, to which she replied, “Gotta do what you gotta do!” We walked out heads hung low, though. As we entered the small lobby outside our unit, a janitor I had recognized earlier said, “I know you! Where your wife?” Amanda was in front of me, and right next to her, so I just pointed at Amanda. She squealed! She didn’t recognize Amanda and just went on and on with another janitor we knew about how good Amanda looked. They said she’d thought Amanda was my friend or sister, but looked too good to be Amanda! We were on 6MCE, the floor right below 7MCE, where we’d been before. She worked both floors and said she couldn’t wait to get upstairs to tell Kesha, the 7MCE janitor we knew well, that she’d seen us and how good Amanda looked now! It was a boost we needed at the moment.
Amanda waited while I walked through what felt like the inner sanctum of the MCE building to get to the garage. I helped get Amanda loaded up and gave her a big hug that only brought tears. When we were leaving, I asked, “What type of emotional support food do you need? Are fires going to cut it?” I got a soft, “Yeah.” So, we hit Chick-fil-A on the way home. Amanda hadn’t eaten since the night before, neither had I, except for some saltines I stole from the break room!
We stuffed our faces on the ride home, then got the car unloaded and just chilled. Well, I chilled, Amanda was busy unpacking, I guess she needed to be busy for a minute. Then, not long after, she sat down, the kidney coordinator called. Buckle up because this day’s roller coaster ride wasn’t over!
It turns out that what they thought was bad from the preliminary biopsy results of the donor kidney wasn’t. The later biopsy pathology showed it to be good! The coordinator said she’d only had this happen a time or two in her five years as a pre-transplant coordinator. The reason she was calling was to see if Amanda still wanted to accept it, again, or just wait for the next one! It was kind of an on-the-spot thing, and we didn’t have much time to think about it. Amanda said she would, as long as the kidney’s viability wasn’t compromised. The coordinator told her it was already on a pump, that they had made significant advances in kidney transplants, and that it would be fine. So Amanda said she’d accept it. When Amanda got off the phone, she joked, “I just got done unpacking!”
There was one hitch: we had to wait, again. Since it was rejected, the kidney was offered to another center. Only if the other center rejected it would it come back our way. The coordinator said she’d know in 30 minutes, so we waited impatiently! She had mentioned that since the kidney was already on a pump, if we did get it, the surgery would be at 6 am. So true was there no need for Amanda to rush and repack at least. They would have needed to push it a bit anyway since Amanda had eaten.
The call came back quicker than I was thinking. Nothing had changed; the other center had accepted the kidney, so we were still in the same boat: no kidney. After that whole ordeal with the re-offer, it felt like a kick while we were down. Yet, I know God was up to something, and I was still holding out that a better one was on the way. To be honest, I am still believing and holding out that He may still wake Amanda’s kidneys up. I haven’t stopped praying for that either. Yet, as Isaiah says, His ways are higher than ours, as well as His thoughts. We may not understand all of this, but God has a plan, one made from His perfect faithfulness long ago.
Knowing those very things helps, but it didn’t make me stop from feeling like I’d just been run over by a bus. We were both running on very little sleep. Amanda said she had gotten maybe 30 minutes. I was the same or less. I dozed off after takeoff for a few minutes, and that was all I was running in for the past 36 hours or so. I joked with some friends that I felt like I needed a stiff drink after all that emotional roller coaster, but I was going to take a nap instead! What a ride we’d had. I did, in fact, take a good nap. Amanda was already napping when I leaned back in my recliner and pulled up the ottoman to catch the 18” or so of my legs that hang off! I took my glasses off and bedded down. Those of you who wear glasses know I was in a good nap once the glasses came off. At least that’s how it is with me, when the glasses come off, that means nap time is on!
After a couple hours or so, I woke up before Amanda and knew we’d need something to eat, but I wasn’t about to cook, so I pulled up the Uber Eats app. I found a Mediterranean restaurant and added some items to the cart. When Amanda stirred, I asked, “Mediterranean?” She agreed, then I said, “You want to pick or me?” and she said just to order, so I pushed the purchase button on the cart! We ate, then had an after-dinner nap that lasted an entire movie and a good chunk of the next one Hulu selected. Amanda had to coax me out of my chair with a few let’s get in beds, but I wasn’t easily stirred. I’m not napper, but this day had taken it out of me and put me down for the count. We crawled into bed, snuggled up, and passed out.
I still hadn’t planned on when I should return home. The answer wasn’t going to be long enough for Amanda, whatever I decided. To be honest, financially, I should have already been on a plane back so I could get back to work. This was a big hit to us, not just financially, but emotionally. I knew I needed to stay with Amanda for a few days after this. I also know the laws of things like this. If I leave, she’ll get a call for another kidney quickly; if I stay, she won’t. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. One thing I do know is that money can be made up, and sometimes, well, a lot of times, with what we’ve been through, it just gets sacrificed. There is never a time down the road when I’ve regretted taking care of Amanda instead of being at work.
I’m still calculating when I will go back, likely sometime over the weekend. I really wasn’t thinking about coming back so soon. I knew I needed to come home before the end of the month to get enough days to keep my insurance. Yet when I booked the flight, the last thing I thought was that I’d need to come right back. I had some friends pick up my Suburban from the airport to avoid paying for a few weeks of parking. I may rent a car and drive to save on airfare, since last-minute flights are so expensive. I’m still calculating everything to figure out when to head back.
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