Current Adventures!

As most of you might have heard, on Saturday, July 15th at about 3:30 pm eastern, I received the call I had been waiting three years to get! The folks from the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) Transplant Center called and told me that there was a matching kidney waiting for me!

This was great news overall, but it came with a few issues. The main one is that I was standing in front of a barbecue grill in South Hadley, MA cooking for my annual (though somewhat belated) 4th of July cookout. Another issue was that the reason the cookout was delayed in the first place was that I was going to be attending a friend's wedding the next day. Kind of a bummer that I had to miss it, but I think all parties involved understood!

Anyway, after getting the call, I managed to book a flight out of Boston that evening and landed in Minneapolis at just before Midnight. I was picked up at the airport by my friend Eng and driven to HCMC for admission and my (supposedly) last dialysis session. They got me in and dialysed (sp?) by 5 AM and dumped me in a hospital bed to prep me for surgery.

I just have to pause here because I have to thank my friend Eng for all of his support during this. He stayed with me all night during that dialysis session and has come to visit me every day in the hospital and even loaned my girlfriend his car since she can not drive mine (I have a stick). This is the kind of buddy you want to have in the trenches with you when the fit hits the shan, you know what I mean?

Anyway, on Sunday, there was some running around while they got the final cross-match tests done and I finally went into surgery at around 3 pm central. Obviously I don't remember much of the next few hours. All I know is that I woke up with a huge scar on my belly and a whole lot of pain! Fortunately, I was in a hospital and they have drugs for that! They kept me nice and loaded for the next day or so and I was visited by lots of my friends from work and by the time I managed to get my cell phone charged again I had a mountain of voicemails as well. I even got flowers from my brother and sister-in-law. Sometimes the world does try to make you feel a little bit better.

I got out of the hospital on Friday, July 21st and I have been doing pretty well so far. I am still immune-suppressed, so there won't be a whole lot of going outside and visiting with people, but I would appreciate phone calls and the like. I will try to keep this updated so that people have an idea of what is going on with me, but I am going to be a somewhat irregular direct correspondent. I get tired easily these days and even with not working, I think this is going to be a bit of a bear to get through.

I'm going to bed now! Talk to you tomorrow!