Part Eighteen: It's GO Time!

GUESS WHO'S GONNA BE A KIDNEY DONOR!?!?!

The kidney transplant coordinator called this morning with the results of my CT scan and to ask a few questions that the hurried kidney doctor neglected to ask.

First of all, I guess the CT scan looked good. The coordinator didn't get into specifics, but I'm assuming I have the appropriate number of kidneys and the usual vein configuration. She said everything looked "normal" and "wonderful".

In her rush, the kidney doctor forgot to ask whether or not my mom was living and healthy, whether or not I had siblings (and if they were healthy), and if any of my family had high blood pressure.

I'm never very good about family history questions. I said there was probably a good chance one or more of my grandparents had high blood pressure... that my mom didn't as far as I knew... and that my brothers were still quite young and had not shown any signs of high blood pressure.

I confirmed that the kidney doctor had given me orders for another creatinine clearance test, that I would be doing the urine collection on Thursday since I was off work that day, and that I would be dropping that off Friday morning. I will also be doing the other smaller urine collection at the office to make up for the "contaminated" sample that I gave on Friday.

The coordinator reminded me that I still needed to have a Pap Smear done before the transplant... and advised that I allow at least a week for the results to come back.

Then she was like, "Okay, when do you want to schedule the transplant for?"

And I was like... "Uhhh...."

She offered a number of dates, "October 11th, 18th, 25th..."

They all seemed sooo soon. I wasn't imagining that it could happen so soon and I was by no means prepared to schedule the transplant.

I said something like, "Well, I don't know what's going on with my dad..."

And she laughed at me. She told me that I was the "main player" and that I was the one who should decide when I wanted to do this.

One of my best friends is getting married in Texas on October 21st... so I picked the 25th as the transplant date. The coordinator seemed anxious to lock in a date and that will give my dad time to get his affairs in order.

Crazy.