A visit with the vampires. (Testing round 1)

On Monday I went to the local hospital to have my blood drawn for my first round of testing to be a potential kidney donor. I don’t know what I expected it to be like, but it was easy. And for the most part, painless. Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis had mailed me some blood tubes to take in with me as well as the doctors orders for the blood draw. I think they sent me around 6-7 tubes. I realize now that I probably should have counted them… But I didn’t. So, let’s just go with 7. B-J wanted the blood to test for blood type and tissue matching as well as to check my cell count and stuff like that. Local hospital also had their own blood to draw to be tested here. (The B-J vials were sent by FedEx overnight back to St. Louis) Local hospital is testing for diseases like AIDS and hepatitis. I think the local hospital needed 5 tubes of blood. The lady told me that if there were any red flags on their blood draw I would get a call that day. Since I didn’t get a call, I guess everything was ok for that part.

Twelve vials, y’all.

TWELVE.

One Two.

12.

(Yes, I did pull out my iPhone and photograph this. And yes… The lady did look at me like I was crazy. And yes, she’s probably right.)

The neat thing about going to this particular hospital is that Jami works there. So, after my blood draw I walked to the pharmacy and met up with her. She was headed to get a juice and to do her dialysis so I asked if I could tag along. (By “asked”, I mean forced her to take me along and show me how dialysis works. And I also forced her into a photo.) Since Jami has to do her dialysis 4 times a day, she is allowed about an hour break at work to do it. She goes up a few floors up and is able to use one of the breastfeeding/family rooms. Basically, Jami has a tube in her abdomen that she hooks up to an IV bag. There are two bags… One for liquid to go in (On the IV pole) and one is the liquid that’s coming out (The one in her hand). I think it took about 45 mins total. It’s obviously a much more complicated process than this, so if you have any questions, please ask.

I found out on Wednesday that my blood had arrived in St Louis and that assuming everything went according to plan, we would find out the results by next Thursday. One week from today. This is only round 1, though, so even if I am a match on these tests I still have many more tests to do. I think there are 6 rounds of testing total.

We will find out next week if the journey continues.

Cross your fingers until then…

xoxo

A not so exciting update.

Right now we are waiting. There’s not really anything going on in the kidney donor world. I found out I needed to be added to my husband’s insurance because I didn’t have a full-coverage health insurance policy. I did that some time last week and it will be official on February 9th. I cannot go farther with testing until my insurance is effective… So.. we wait. About 6 weeks from February 9th we will know if I am a match and what step I need to take next. It will either be surgery to give Jami my kidney, or the not-as-positive news that I am not a match and the search will continue.

I sent Jami a list of questions that I have been sent in by y’all. And I have to say they are really good ones. Stay tuned and I will have that Q&A session posted tomorrow!

As always, thanks so much for all the love and support. xoxo