Far sooner than I thought!

As Sarah has reported, we all get to come home together on Thursday! Having resigned myself to staying in Madison for at least a month, this came as amazing news.

My labs look good, I have recovered from this transplant far more quickly than the last and I think my surgeon has more confidence in the doctors in Seattle now that he has had several patients from the area. When I had my first transplant, no kidney-panceas transplants had been done in Seattle and only 4 in Portland. It is now a far more common procedure and they do them routinely at Swedish.

So I get to travel home with Katie and Sarah and recuperate in my own bed.

I will be discharged on Tuesday, check my labs on Wednesday and fly home on Thursday. Amazing!

See you all sooner than I thought.

Running Laps Around the Hospital!

We just got back from our adventure to the Transplant Center. Soon, Katie's name will be added to the big wall (we're guessing it will show up once there are enough names to cover a tile). They gave us (FREE!) bumper stickers and pins and bracelets (oh, and peppermint lifesavers...Katie got 2 because she looked so good after giving a kidney only 4 days ago).

Then we went by the 24 hour (but no open on Sundays) mini mart and got some ice cream. I got another incredible hot fudge sundae and Katie got a single scoop (which is only 85 cents less than the sundae...I say, bring on the toppings!) and Paula was boring with a diet Dr. Pepper.

We also stopped by the gift shop, where Katie and I each bought cute lanyard things to hold our school IDs. They have brightly colored beads and fimo beads with (10) children's faces -- maybe now I'll actually wear my ID.

Tonight I think Katie and I are going to dinner with Reid and Amy, and Paula will enjoy one last dinner in the hospital.

Paula's Coming Home!

Katie and I made the long trek down to the cafeteria to bring some lunch back up to the room, so that we could eat with Paula. Katie got turkey, green beens (that she really must find delightful, based on the vast number of time she's eaten them in the past few days), and red potatoes (which describes as having salt-lick qualities). I got a cheeseburger and onion rings (with a little ranch to dip in), and we got a lovely giant m&m cookie to share.

While we were eating, Paula's surgeon came by, and gave her the choice of being discharged today or tomorrow. She's decided that she wants to stay through tomorrow, giving her more time to practice walking around and becoming more independent. The best news of all, is that he wants her traveling home with us on Thursday (because, as he put it, she has access to doctors in Seattle and would rather have her traveling with "the youngsters"). So she's on the phone right now with Northwest, annoyed at how difficult it is to get handicap seating arranged (because while you can select your own seat online, they do not allow you to select handicap seating).

Monday Monday.

Good morning everyone!

It's pretty dark and gloomy here in Madison this morning, but the little sprinkley rain didn't keep Katie and I from walking from the hotel to the hospital. She did great!...even though the hotel elevator was being serviced, so we had to walk down the stairs from the 3rd floor, not something we'd expected. Once we got to the hospital, we plopped Katie in a wheelchair (a very cute one that looks a lot like a grocery cart -- they even stack like grocery carts!) and scooted down to the cafeteria just in time to get some oatmeal for breakfast, before they switched over to lunch.

It looks like it may be raining harder out now, and every once in a while we hear what sounds like thunder (though it's possible that someone is just doing something awful to the dumpsters). The flowers are certainly adding a needed bit of cheer to the room today.

After a while, we're going to take a stroll down to the gift shop and the transplant center (so that we can see the wall of all of the live donors and get Katie's picture in front of it).

Katie's belly is still quite swollen from all of the abuse it has received, but the swelling is going down, so her clothes (that were quite loose before surgery) are fitting much better today.

Good Night.

Glass Nickel Pizza is good! We enjoyed a large cheese and pineapple pizza (a favorite of Katie and I), and with a little help from Reid and Amy, demolished the whole thing!

The only real technical difficulty about leaving the hospital is that Katie no longer has the benefits of a power-driven bed -- a real problem for someone who can't easily sit up on her own! Thankfully, my friend Julie once told me about how she had to roll herself out of bed after a non-elective c-section with her first son, and we have utilized the technique, given the similar nature of the incision. Katie is starting to get the hang of it, but the hotel bed is awfully high above the ground (and Katie is not awfully high above the ground), so there is an added degree of challenge.

Our goal for the morning is to walk the two blocks from the hotel back to the hospital. The fresh air will be good for Katie and we plan to take our time. Also, we'll plop her into a wheelchair immediately upon arriving at the hospital because we don't want her to overdo it, and it is a BIG hospital. Tomorrow, after breakfast, Katie and Paula want to show me the transplant center, where they have a big wall with the names of all of the live donors. Soon, Katie's name will be on that wall! Also, we've been told by Paula's surgeon that we should take a walk through their new Children's Hospital, which disturbingly enough seems to be named after an insurance company (American Family...you know you've heard their jingle...), who probably gave a huge load of money toward building it. The surgeon suggested that the problem is that it is lovely, build like a hotel (with long hallways), but slightly impractical for treating small people who often can't walk and have IVs and other equipment requiring ongoing staff attention.

Katie's Been Discharged!!!!!

It's been a long, exciting day, with no time to update the blog.

This morning Katie and Paula were both allowed to take showers, much to their delight.

Katie had a good night, so this morning they decided to discharge her! Getting back to the hotel from the hospital was no small feat (though it's only two blocks away)-- Katie (riding in a chair), myself, a 2nd wheelchair full of stuff. Thankfully, a very kind nurse helped us to the door, and our lovely hotel had a wheelchair for Katie to ride in once we arrived. Of course Katie can walk all around on her own (or they wouldn't have let her out), but discharging took a lot out of her (not to mention, the hospital is huge). After spending a bit of time resting in the room, Katie and I headed back to the hospital to hang out with Paula, which is where we're at now.

To minimize the amount of baggage we needed to haul back to the hotel (and because we plan to spend time with Paula while we're here), Katie and I moved all of her lovely flowers and her balloon into Paula's hospital room.

Paula has had a relatively good day overall, though the morning started off rough with a bit of a scare when she started hyperventilating. No need to worry though, the nurses and doctors here took great care of her and think it was probably an anxiety attack (she'd just been talking about how worried she had been that something bad might happen to Katie during the operation when the hyperventilation occurred). Just to be safe, they are doing many tests as part of a cardiac workup, and so far everything is fine. The only real change is that they are having her lay low for a bit and put her back on the oxygen, but with luck, she'll be back out of bed by morning. Paula's major joy is that the water retention in her legs is gone (for the first time in the time the nearly six years that I have known her, and from what I hear, a very long time) -- see the picture above!

At the moment, Katie and I are awaiting the delivery of our pizza from The Glass Nickel, which was recommended to us by the lovely nursing staff here at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.

Want to see how they harvest a kidney?

Here are Katie's war wounds in all of their glory. The only way she can actually see the big incision is by looking at the pictures, because bending isn't really a possibility at the moment.

Supposedly everything will be all healed up and the pain with be completely gone within the next couple of weeks (as early as 2 weeks, we hear).