Catch up on the physical and psychological testing to this point
Where was I? Oh, yes, I was told I could basically pick a date, as long as it was after July 5. It was now mid-June. I had wanted have this surgery in late April, back when I was naive and thought I had some semblance of control over this process and had literally no idea how long it would take.
I said AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE PLEASE, PERHAPS YOU’VE NOTICED THE VERY SICK YOUNG MAN I AM GOING TO DONATE TO?
Then I got a phone call – instead of July 8, how about July 3? Yes, yes, of course. How’s June 19? (Just kidding, that was yesterday.)
So we set up our lives for me to have surgery July 3. This involved:
- My mother-in-law coming to stay at our house for three nights, so that Taxman could bunk at the hospital with me
- The dog going to the kennel for a week – while I was in the hospital and a few days afterwards
- Bowing out of the camp carpool I had set up
- Finally saying yes to the meal train
- Allowing the rabbi of our congregation to make a fuss over this in public (blah, blah, inspirational)
- Making an incredibly detailed Google calendar for my husband and mother-in-law with camp times/locations/transport apparatus and adding things like “do a load of kids’ laundry” and “buy fruit and milk.”
- Telling like everyone who didn’t already know
- Trying to ensure that my mother did not literally die from worry (once I had told her once and for all that she and her urologist were not going to convince me to back out)
- Making food for the freezer and pantry, despite the upcoming meal train
I should note here that I would not recommend altruistic living organ donation to someone with small kids. (If it’s directed to a family member/friend, I mean, you should do it – it will just be even more of a logistical nightmare than I had.) Between the post-surgical restrictions – not lifting more than 10lbs for several weeks, not driving for two weeks – and having to spill out your entire life plan for a while…it’s a lot.
Ready, Set, Uh-oh
Maybe you saw this coming due to my super-subtle foreshadowing, but I did not.
I managed to pass the two weeks without much anxiety. I was sleeping at night (I mean, my usual not-great sleeping, but I was not anxiety-not-sleeping). I was slowly shutting down work stuff, doing last errands (so many of these), last grocery shop, endless laundry.
July 3, Taxman and I arrived at the hospital. We had a bureaucratic issue upon checking in, because WELCOME TO ISRAEL, KIDS! My intended recipient went to dialysis. Someone else got to work on the paperwork snafu, and we settled into the couches on the transplant ward. There seemed to be a lot of people waiting, and not so many people being dispersed into their rooms. Hmm.
And whispering.
Finally, a few hours into some eavesdropping, Muhammed (the transplant department charge nurse) pulled us into a room. He was so sorry, but my surgery was being postponed. It was a confluence of events – a fatal car accident with an organ donor had brought two unexpected surgeries to the hospital overnight, and half the staff was abroad at a conference. Not wanting to go under the knife with tired surgeons, I readily agreed to come back at their earliest convenience. I did some intake paperwork to smooth my way for the “next time” and slipped out of the hospital with Taxman before noon.
We soon had a new date, July 10, and set to work undoing all the infrastructure we had in place. Thankfully, the big pieces (kid and dog watching) were easily undone and redone.
Taxman and I went to lunch before going home to relieve his mom, our “babysitter.”
Then I fell apart. I had apparently invested a LOT of energy in keeping myself calm, internally and externally. So then I tortured myself with the unanswerable questions of “What does this delay mean? Am I stupid to do something so dangerous? IS IT A SIGN?”
I wallowed and tossed and turned for a few hours. Then I realized I don’t believe in signs, and it was just a logistical issue at the hospital (the transplant teams have to use designated ORs so they don’t take over the ones from other departments), and nothing was different – I just going to have to screw up my courage and do it again.
I spent the week not doing a whole lot, as I had already squared away most of my life. I went to Pilates, I went swimming, I went to the library, I did laundry. I picked up a lot of camp carpool shifts. I asked for work, but it had already been taken care of.
After a dramatic “last coffee with six kidneys” (me and my coffee klatsch) in the final week of June, we had another. You can never have too many coffees.
Coffee is life….this one needs more milk, though.
Next up: Brave face, redux
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