After the Kidney – The Surgery
I spent the night before the transplant having dinner with a few friends and then staying in a hotel room with my parents. As we needed to be at the hospital by 5:30 in the morning, the hotel stay seemed the best option and the hotel was nice enough to give my parents a suite once they’d heard about the reason for our stay. Giving away a kidney does have its benefits.
Around 4 in the morning the day of the surgery, I began to panic for the first time. Up to that point, I’d been strangely calm about the whole situation. Besides looking at the really unpleasant pictures of transplant scars, I’d managed to avoid considering the problems that could occur post-surgery and my denial had enabled me to soldier on through the process. But that morning, I began to think about how the surgeons had changed their wording of my post-surgery state from “feeling some discomfort” to “it’s gonna hurt.” And how I could be endangering my health by leaving myself with only one kidney to work with. When I shared my fears with my parents, they repeated for the umpteenth time that I’d been very brave, but was in no way required to go through with the surgery. For some reason, this knocked some sense into me. Still scared, I sucked it up, got dressed and we headed to the hospital.
We checked in around 5:30 in the morning. We sat through a quick, final round of paper work before my dad was ushered into one room and I was pushed into another. I was given a hospital gown and some socks (neither of which were changed until three days later). They ONCE AGAIN drew some blood and forced me to pee into a cup, even though I had no pee to give. They explained that the final urine test was to check for pregnancy. I tried to assure the nurses that there was really no risk of a pregnancy in current state. As the staff didn’t seem to care much about my love life, they forced me to take the test anyway.
After that, my mother and I sat in my father’s room while they performed similar tests on him. And it wasn’t long before a nurse came into the room to take me to surgery. I was taken into the final waiting room around 8 in the morning. The nurse walked me through a room full of people on gurneys in hospital gowns. I was seated at the end of the room across from a very nice gentleman who obviously saw how scared I was. He tried to say hello, but was soon overwhelmed by doctors preparing him for his own surgery.
It wasn’t long before a surgical resident came to my gurney to keep me company. She informed me that she would be holding the camera for my surgeon. She was clearly enthusiastic about seeing what she called “a really complicated procedure”. I tried to make conversation, which led to an unfortunate incident where she described how cool it is to watch them move the bowels around to get to the kidney. This did not ease my fears. She did, however, tell me to stop panicking about the episode of “Nip/Tuck” where the woman woke up in the middle of a surgery and felt everything. This apparently doesn’t happen much in real life.
The resident was joined by the anesthesiologist, who immediately began hooking me up with several rather painful IVs and who did not appreciate my attempts to joke with him. Then he was joined by my surgeon and another anesthesiologist, who thought it would be a good thing to describe the operation in terms of “stab wounds.” Side note – It is NEVER a good idea to describe something in terms of stab wounds.
With that wonderful thought in my head, the anesthesiologist started flooding my system with water. They wheeled the gurney over to my dad, who had just been brought into the room himself. We said goodbye and then I was being wheeled down the hall towards surgery. And although the anesthesiologist may not have had a sense of humor, he sure knew how to do his job. We weren’t even halfway down the hall before I was out like a light. I didn’t even get to count backwards. I think I was asleep by about 8:30.
As I was asleep, I don’t really know what happened between the hours of 8:30 and 12. But I’ve been told it went something like this. They rolled me on my side. Instead of the two small and one big incisions I’d originally been promised, the surgeon made 5 small and one big incision to remove the kidney. Thanks to modern technology, the incisions no longer involve any cutting into the side or back of the patient. My dad was taken into surgery around 9, I think. Although it seems like there should be some massive process regarding the transportation of the organ, the kidney was removed from me by my surgeon and directly handed off to my dad’s surgeon. My dad’s surgeon then walked the organ over to my dad’s room and placed it in my father. He did not remove either of my dad’s failed kidneys. Instead, the new one was placed on the right side of my dad’s pelvic area. The unplugged the necessary veins and arteries from one of the old kidneys, plugged them into the new one and that was that. Very similar process to plugging in a new car engine, or so I’ve been told. My operation was finished around 12 and my dad’s shortly after.
Now the details get fuzzy for me. I vaguely remember waking up in the recovery room. The anesthesiologist handed me a button attached to a morphine drip which he introduced as my new best friend. Then I don’t remember much. I woke up again to my mother asking if my mouth was dry. I remember her mopping my lips down with something before I passed out again. Woke up again to see both of my aunts standing over me. I was just aware enough to order one of them to stop crying and then I passed out again. I woke up one final time as they began to wheel me into my permanent hospital room. They took me past my dad, who looked just as groggy as I did. We exchanged “I love yous” before I passed out again.
