Kidneys in motion

This comes from my hospital bed, room 227 in section F5 North of the AMC. It’s the first of November. All Saints day, on the western calendar. A blue sky with some white clouds outside. I’m half sitting, thanks to the adjustable bed. Not easy to be writing. An IV is connected to the back of my right hand and I’m hitting more wrong keys than right ones. My lower abdomen on the right is seriously sore. That’s the location of what was formerly Nancy’s kidney. She is now down to one while I’m graced with three, two of which have become bit players, one of which is an instant super star. It’s already doing a great job, the nurses tell me. My creatinine level has fallen dramatically. Other indicators are equally good. My only complaint is that for the time being I must do my best to avoid coughing -- then the abdominal soreness turns to serious pain. I’ve got a green button with which I can press to administer morphine, but so far have only used it once. All that Nancy and I had hoped for seems to have happened.

I remember a transparent blue mask being pressed over my nose and mouth in the operating room , after which the first thing I remember is waking in the recovery room to discover Wendy and Anne sitting next to the bed. I could just barely focus my blurry eyes. So good to see them!

Not sure when I will get to see Nancy -- but hopefully by tomorrow, our 25th anniversary and my 66th birthday. (The birthday gift has been delivered.)

PS from Nancy added 19 December: The surgeon who operated so skillfully on both of us is Dr. Mirza Idu. A little web research reveals that he's an MD PhD (a medical doctor with a PhD), or, as the medical students sometimes say, a Mudd-Fudd. These tend to be over-achieving doctors of amazing skill who are as interested in research as they are in their particular field of medicine. He has written quite a bit on donor nephrectomy.

Home plate

Again more with the hijacking.

We've sent out a few e-mails to those on Jim's mailing list to keep everyone up to date on the surgery. Unfortunately some of the e-mail addresses were not entirely correct so the messages might not have gotten through to some of you. For this we apologize profusely!

Jim has now successfully received his third kidney and has been taken to the recovery room to sleep it off. All went well with the surgery; again no complications.

Nancy is back in her own little hospital room, feeling groggy but doing fine.

Once we've heard from the two patients we'll get back to you on their current status and possibilities for visiting for those who are so inclined.

Cait

Half way

I've hijacked the blog to leave a quick message for those who might not be on the mailing list.

Nancy is now out of surgery - no complications, everything went according to plan. She'll be groggy for a while, but should be on speaking terms tomorrow (and definitely Friday: Jim's birthday and their 25Th anniversary!!!)

Jim is now being wheeled into the anesthesiologists and will be fast asleep shortly. They should be all done in about 3,5 hours and we'll here from the hospital then. So I'll be posting again soon...

Cait

At the AMC

It’s 4 pm. Nancy and I arrived at the hospital about six and a half hours ago.

We’re in different sections -- me in the department for kidney transplants, Nancy in a nearby section for short-term surgery. We saw each other when we were together in the anesthesiology department earlier in the afternoon, but otherwise have mainly been in our respective rooms. I’ve had various tests (x-ray, ECG, blood, etc.) plus questions to answer (mainly having to do with medical history) and now await a final session of dialysis. The nurse I’ve seen the most of is a fellow cheese head, as people living in Alkmaar are called.

I have a wonderful view from my room -- huge sky, dramatic clouds, the Arena sports stadium in the distance looking like an immense flying saucer that had come to rest in the southeast of Amsterdam. All in all, the AMC (the Academic Medical Center) seems a nice place to be if one has to be in a hospital.

On the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church, tomorrow is the feast of the Gospel author and physician, Saint Luke. Not bad timing for major surgery.

(photo: Nancy on the train en route to the AMC.)

Anointing

Yesterday, at the end of the Liturgy, Fr Sergei Ovsiannikov announced to the parish that there would be a special prayer service at 11 a.m. on Wednesday for the kidney transplant. (As it happens, Nancy will be undergoing surgery at that hour.) Also, about an hour after the Liturgy, there was a short service of anointing the two of us -- several photos taken by Vlad Dobrovinski are posted here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/72157602782265033/

I don’t find it easy to write about the experience of being anointed in preparation for the transplant or being so intensely prayed for by the members of our parish. Short as it was, the anointing reminded me of our marriage in the church -- a similar sense of standing in a zone of pure grace.

Guaranteed to cure

Today we got a card from our friend Seraphim Honeywell, lawyer by profession and also warden of the Orthodox parish in Oxford. On the front of the card was a reproduction of a full-page ad published in 1893 in The London Illustrated News promoting the sale of the Carbolic Smoke Ball, guaranteed to cure coughs, colds, catarrh, asthma, bronchitis, throat deafness, snoring, sore eyes, influenza, hay fever, headaches, croup, whooping cough and neuralgia. A hundred pound reward was offered to anyone who took the remedy and afterward contracted influenza. Testimonials were provided by such distinguished users as the Bishop of London (“The Carbolic Smoke Ball has benefitted me greatly.”) and a list was provided of aristocrats and other notables to whom the medicine had been supplied, including the Duke of Edinburgh and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

While there was no claim made that this excellent product also would cure kidney illness, one assumes any medicine so all-powerful as this could easily restore kidneys to mint condition.

Ah, if only we had known there was a non-surgical alternative!

Sadly, the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company was successfully sued by a user, Mrs. Carlill, who had contracted influenza. The company ended up going into liquidation.

Jim

Yes I said yes I will yes

What goes into making a decision like this, to offer a vital organ to someone?

It took me a long time. When Jim first learned from the doctor that dialysis was in his future, the idea of a kidney transplant didn’t really hit me. Each time he went to the doctor to get his levels tested we were apprehensive, then relieved to hear that he was still on the positive side. But finally the doctor told him he had crossed the line, and dialysis had to begin immediately. That was in January 2006.

At first I reasoned that I couldn’t even begin to consider myself a possible donor because I’m the principal breadwinner in the family, and we couldn’t afford it. I imagined myself bedridden for months, weakened by the loss of the kidney, unable to do any work of any kind. In May of 2006 we both attended a conference in France where we met a Canadian woman who said she was willing to donate a kidney to Jim. We were touched and thrilled, and the woman began to investigate the procedure. She even made contact with the transplant people at our hospital in Amsterdam, and they approved her offer (often these kinds of distant, non-family donors are not approved). But after a while it became clear that she was too busy to actually go through with it.

At that point I began to wonder if I could give it a try. I had been doing some internet investigation and had learned that kidney donation is not as debilitating as I had thought, and I wouldn’t be out of commission for all that long.

But you have to reach a certain point when you sit down, open your mouth, and say the words, “I want to donate a kidney to you.” Recently people have told me how brave I’m being, but believe me, the bravest part of this whole process is just saying those words, getting yourself to that point where you overcome all your excuses and fears. I kept thinking of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, who finally makes the decision to carry the ring in order to destroy it in Mount Doom. He must make this decision on his own, and when he finally says, “I’ll carry the ring,” he becomes the organizing principle for the entire story. I have always believed that Tolkien was very deliberate in naming Frodo, and that his name could easily fit into the long etymological entry for the word “free” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Frodo -- one who acts out of freedom. Freedom does not mean doing whatever you feel like if it’s in your interest, because sometimes you do things that you think are in your interest only to discover later on that you did them under some kind of compulsion -- peer group pressure, fear of rejection, fear of loss. Acting under compulsion is not freedom. But acting out of love, sometimes doing something that’s downright dangerous, is what freedom truly is. (Interestingly enough, the word “free” and the word “beloved” and “friend” are related, as the OED etymology also shows.)

So I said yes. And when I did, I suddenly felt as if all the winds were blowing in the right direction, as if I had made a free decision that was somehow in line with a kind of cosmic truth. I realized that for all the months that I had been saying I couldn’t donate a kidney out of economic considerations, I had made myself responsible for a kind of self-wrought logical argument that had to be constantly reinforced with my own insistence in order to stay in place. But the yes floated freely. The yes was borne up by something beyond me and my own logical arguments.
This is not to say that the coming days will be easy or painless, or that I feel confident and fearless. I’m still very apprehensive, and when I think about the operation I feel my heart starting to beat faster and my breathing becoming shallower. But I wouldn’t go back on this decision for anything in the world.