Part Ten: Screwy Tires and Iced-Tea Makers

So last night I get a call from my friend Suzi that went a little something like this:

"So I figured you're just sitting around peeing, and I just want to hang out, so I'm going to bring my iced tea maker over."

Now there's a great friend for you! We drank lots of iced tea and listened to the ballgame and knitted some.

Today was like the first day of school and I woke up around 6:30am in anticipation of the days events. I tried really hard to sleep longer but I had to pee from so much iced tea the night before that I went ahead and got up for one final fill in the ol' collection jug.

I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything this morning so I skipped my usual Mountain Dew breakfast and prepared for the day.

On the way out of my garage and down the back alley I noticed a weird tapping noise as my tire revolved. I got out and looked at my tires. They all seemed fine. I started to get back into the car when my eye darted to a large screw that was poking out of the front driver's side tire. Sweet! I then started to panic a little because I was afraid my tire was going to go flat super quickly and I wouldn't be able to get to my tests today. Then I remembered that I only live about a mile from the hospital and that my parent's were driving up this morning to meet me. If I made it to the hospital but my tire went flat in the parking lot, I knew I wouldn't be stranded. So I took the chance and continued driving. I parked strategically in case I needed to get at the front tire to change it. Then I went on to my appointments.

While I appreciate the flexibility of just being told to go to the outpatient building "between 8 and 10am"... I hate not having set appointments. It seems weird to me. I knew that I would be meeting with several people after my tests and was concerned about being on schedule for that, but I was told to just call them when I was done. Ooooo-kaaay.

When I got in the outpatient building I was troubled to find that the only test orders the receptionist had on file for me were from my previous blood typing/cross matching visit. Rather than call the transplant office and verify that this was correct, he just shrugged and said, "Well, I guess we'll just use these same forms." WHAT THE!?!?! Yeah, that seems like a great idea.

After a few minutes in the waiting room, the nurse came and got me... led me the familiar route to the blood room and started to sit me down in the pistachio green adult high chair. Then she looked at me, looked at the paperwork, and then said, "Didn't we do this already?!??"

Uh... YEAH! I'm glad somebody there is on top of things. While she was waiting for the appropriate paperwork to get faxed down, she went ahead and did my EKG. For that, she took me behind a curtain and had me lay down on a bed. She then asked me to lift my shirt up so that she could get to my chest. Then she attached a bunch of sticky things to me on my chest and a few other places. Then she attached a bunch of wires to the sticky things and took a reading. She had to move the patches around a few times until she got a good reading. Then she printed it off and was done. It probably only took five minutes at the most. [For a more scientific explanation of the EKG look online somewhere...]

After that, she had me sit in the chair, then she drew probably at least six different tubes of blood in varying sizes. I know that some of the stuff they were testing for was HIV and Hepatitis. The nurse told me that I have little veins. She took my 24-hour urine collection and recorded the start and stop times. Then she handed me a cup and asked me to give her another urine sample.

Let me just say that I HATE giving urine samples while I'm at the doctor's office. I've only had to do a drug test once for a job and I prepared for that sucker for drinking lots and lots of water and not peeing for a long long time beforehand. I was practically wetting my pants for that one.

But I hate when they spring them on me and I'm not expecting it. First of all... maybe I don't have any pee in me. And the other thing is that I get too nervous to pee. I just can't pee on command! It usually backfires. But I went into the bathroom and the nurse had given me some special moist towelette to wipe myself with before peeing. And I sat there and thought about the iced tea maker from last night and then I was able to squeeze a bit out. I told the nurse that she got lucky this time and she chuckled like she hadn't already heard that one a million times before.

After that, I was led back out to the waiting room where I was quickly whisked away by the x-ray technician who was going to be doing my chest x-ray. I was taken back to a small dark room filled with x-ray equipment and he asked me to remove my shirt and bra and had me put on a gown. Then I had to stand facing a board and breath in really deep while I took the first x-ray. Then he had me turn to my side and lift my arms up above my head and breath in and he took another one. That was the end of the day's testing.

I walked over to the hospital which was next door and attempted to find the Transplant office. They were doing some construction there and I had a difficult time finding where I was supposed to go. I got a little worried when I got to the 5th floor (where the office was), stopped at a nurses station and asked where the Transplant Services office was and she gave me a blank look. That didn't instill much confidence in me. She did help me find the place though, which was tucked back in a little corner. Not really what I imagined at all. It was a cluttered little office that smelled like coffee and donuts and paperwork and bad textured cubicle walls. I was directed into a small conference room where I met with the financial advisor first.

She really didn't have too much to say and I really got the impression right away that these meetings were some sort of formality. She basically just said that she wanted to make sure I had thought about how I would handle being off work and then she got worried when I told her my health insurance was ending soon, even though I'm signing up for a different plan next week. She was worried that I might not be able to get insurance or something if they knew I was going to donate a kidney. But I told her, as far as I was concerned, I hadn't completed my tests or got any results back yet. I haven't met with the kidney doctor or even made up my mind yet. Until I'm laying there on the table under knife, I still have the chance to change my mind. I don't really feel like I'm hiding something from them. Like I've got cancer and didn't tell them or something.

Her main reason for being concerned was because my dad's insurance does not cover the medication I will require after the surgery and it also doesn't cover any related checkups after six months. Plus, it's good to have health insurance.

Next I met with the social worker who asked me questions like, "what are your leisure activities?" and "why do you want to do this?" She took down a lot of information, shook my hand, and was out the door. If she had been any sort of a good social worker she would've been easily able to make me cry... but I guess there was no need for that.

As I was waiting for the last meeting with the transplant coordinator, I heard familiar voices outside the conference room. It was my mom and dad! My parents joined me for my meeting with the coordinator which was an overview of what to expect during surgery. I found it to be somewhat informative. My parents were asking more questions than me and my mom nervously tittered during uncomfortable moments, like when the coordinator spoke of me and my dad taking laxatives before the surgery.

I was told that I would get my results within the next couple of days and if everything was clear, then I would have the CT scan and meet with the kidney doctor.

Overall, the second round of testing and my meetings went a lot quicker than I thought they would. The testing didn't take very long at all. I was at the outpatient building for an hour at the most, and that was with the little paperwork mix-up.

I still don't feel like this is really happening.