It Works

Friday morning. 9:35 to be exact. I’m waiting to speak with the doctors regarding my biopsy results. Nervous? nah. If the results are at least neutral, I will be happy. Bad news, that’s another story.

Waiting in the waiting room is similar to watching grass grow. Grass that hasn’t had rain in a long time. It could take hours. Especially if they are running behind. Today, the room is filled, which means they are behind. I observe the patients and families waiting. Some read, some talk, while the younger ones text on their cell and then there are the ones who pretend to sleep, but you know they really aren’t. They are just trying to shut out the world and be alone for a few precious minutes. And then there is me, and my nice, big, laptop to keep me occupied.

Sitting a few seats away to my left is a Polynesian gentleman that has had a grueling time since his transplant last June. He is back in sweats, with a matching beanie pulled over his head. He is a tall, gentle giant well over 6 ft, but the way he is hunched over in his chair, I doubt he feels half his size. His sweet pea sized mother, sits by his side quietly reading. In front of me, a  Pilipino family of 3 are talking and texting… A grandmother and her teenage grandkids who act as her translator.  Things seem to be going well for them. And then there  is a Hispanic family. These people really stick together and come in full force. The patient who comes with the cousin, grandparent, grandkids, spouse…there is about 7 of them. They take up a whole section of the waiting room.  The adults just sit there, while the kids are coloring on the floor or running around in a two foot radius of the adults. It’s almost like there is an invisible electric fence keeping them in the perimeter. Do not cross.

……My name is called. I love Julie the nurse. She’s about my age and way cool. She does the usual temp, blood pressure and weigh in and sends me to my room. I get all kinds of friendly heads poking in to say hi.

Doc walks in. The results.  INCONCLUSIVE. Really? Doc Steiner explains to me that a very good pathologist studied my kidney samples and nothing showed up to explain the current situation. It may be too early in the stages to find anything, meaning nothing has developed enough for the humans to interpret. (Duh, coulda told you that…in fact, I thought I brought it up pre-biopsy.) Okay, so the good news is there are no signs of rejection. Yay! Therefore, everyone has done what they could they’re just going to let it go for now.

In fact, being the star prisoners, ‘B’idney and I am doing so well, that we get the A-OK to return back to my regular Nephrologists in Orange County for the next 3 months. They will keep a close eye on my progress, which I know will be ok. If my symptoms get worse, they’re going to bring me in for another biopsy… Or so they think, ha! I would like my ‘B’idney to continue looking like a kidney, and not holey swiss cheese, thank you very much.

P.s.- Brian my donor suggested maybe I need to give ‘B’idney a shot of Mountain Dew, since that’s what he pickled his kidneys with before and they seemed to love it. I’m surprised ‘B’idney isn’t glowing fluorescent green. :)

LOVE him

Today is Valentine’s Day. So I wanted to dedicate this post to my Paul (aka ‘Bub’). Honey, here are 10 things I love about you:

1. you can always make me laugh, even when  I am grumpy

2. you treat me the way every woman on this earth should be treated

3. you are always there to comfort me and walk by my side during my times of trail

4. your kindness and integrity towards me and the people you come in contact with makes you a real man

5. you take me on fun adventures no one else would dare to and you’re right there next to me

6. the little looks you give me and your hugs make me feel secure

7. your heart that found the part of me that brings out the best of us

8. you refuse to ever completely grow up

9. you make me feel like the luckiest woman

10. you are my best friend

(11. you were such a big help and comfort during the days of my transplant, organizing and getting everyone to the hospital and making sure their needs were met)

You have been such a blessing in my life and I am grateful to have you with me through this journey of life! Thanks for being you and for taking a chance on me. I love you!

2 Months

It’s not how far you fall

but how you land on your feet

that matters

I usually land pretty well

Today I am teetering a bit

and teetering is only human

until you get pushed.

I’m sitting in a small patient room down at UCSD. Waiting. I hear footsteps outside my door. They get louder and then they fade. It’s a busy world outside my door.

There’s been a debate the last couple of weeks about performing a biopsy on ‘B’idney, who has been leaking some protein in the urine. It wouldn’t be much of a debate, except the patient, me, is causing a little resistance. The resistance being that I am fiercely protective of ‘B’idney and don’t want anything invasive touching him, especially if the results aren’t going to change the course of treatment. I can be stubborn. It’s in my Asian gene. Can’t help it.

The doctor’s enter and are thoroughly amused that I am typing away on my laptop as I wait. I am blogging. People will tell you I am a quick learner. It doesn’t take me long to come up with ideas to be productive on the days I have to wait up to a few hours in clinic. It was dragging my friend along for company. Then came books. Now it’s my loyal laptop that I got for Christmas, which I LOVE.

Discussions start about my lab results. They are looking good. My creatinine  is down a bit, which tickles me as I’m a bit obsessed about results. I’m starting to feel better about my visit, thinking I can avoid the topic of biopsy. Then enters the attending physician. And along with him follows the bad news. My kidney is still leaking protein in my urine. It’s getting worse. My concern was addressed. Doctor Steiner’s understands my concern especially since it’s only a 50/50 chance of finding something worth treating, however, his concern was that since leaking protein is unusual at this stage of post transplantation, he’s concerned it may be an issue of rejection. I can’t really counter that argument. So, we briefly talk about the biopsy and ‘the date’ is set for next Friday, the 22 of February. It’s set.

As I walk towards my car, my gait waivers a bit. I try to stay strong and fight back the feelings as a solo tear rolls down my face. I am totally bummed. A feeling of roller coaster emotions enter as I went from a high to a low. A thought enters my mind, wondering if the worst happens, will I be able to go through this again? I would be better just staying on dialysis instead of getting a taste of the gold only to have it dissipate.  As I continue walking, I plant my feet firmly one in front of another. I say a prayer and know this too shall pass and I will be okay.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

I would like to give kudos from this recipe to my friend, Vikki and her sis-in-law, Mara who live in Branson, MO.and were kind enough to share this with me.

I love a house filled with the smell of baked goods hot out of the oven.  So, when my long time friend, Vikki,  told  me about this whole wheat bread she made with the simplest of ingredients, I had to give it a whirl.  Another reason being that I am for the time being, a steroid induced diabetic from my transplant meds and need to watch my sugars and carbs. The below recipe uses  minimal honey and is made with whole wheat, which is better for the body than processed white flour. This is so delicious, I am hooked!

The below recipe will make 2 loaves, fit for a Kitchen Aid mixer. If you have a Bosch Mixer you can double the recipe to make 4 loaves. Prep time is only 20 min! Rising time 30 min. Bakes for about 35 min and VOILA! Oh, and this freezes well.

Ingredients:
4 3/4 cups unground Hard Wheat (to be ground)
OR approx 6 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey or less
2 1/2 cups hot water
1 Tablespoon Yeast
1 teaspoon Salt

Directions:

• Grind your wheat into flour and set aside OR use whole wheat flour
• Mix oil, water and honey in mixer
• Sprinkle 3 1/2 cups of flour on top so that water mixture is covered
• Add Yeast, making sure it does NOT touch the water mixture
• Mix and let it rest for about 10 minutes or until it starts bubbling
• Mix in the salt and then the rest of the flour until your dough ball starts cleaning the sides of the bowl. (You may not need to use all of the flour depending on your flour. Just keep an eye on it and make note of how much you need for the next time.)
• Knead dough for about 5 minutes
• Pour onto a lightly greased surface and oil your hands
• Split into 2 loaves
• Shape them and put them into greased bread pans.
• Cover and let dough rise until it doubles ( 30-35 minutes)
• Put into a COLD oven.
• Turn on oven to 350 degrees and bake for 35 minutes.
• Brush tops with olive oil, remove from pans and cool on wire rack
• ENJOY!

This is fantabulous hot out of the oven with a little butter (and jam)!! I do hope you’ll try it, I’m sure you’ll love it. :)

Recreational language

Who needs alcohol and recreational drugs when I’ve got ‘B’idney to entertain me for hours on end. I don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. When I fill out doctor forms with the above questions, it’s really easy. I just slash ‘no’ with my pen all the way down that part of the questionnaire. And I don’t usually curse either. It’s unladylike. That was until ‘B’idney came along. Wonders never cease with this beautiful, little, fist sized organ.

My day is pretty uneventful. I shuffle around the house trying to get little things placed in order. I head out to pick up my car, which is getting some new brakes and a little TLC from our favorite mechanic. I decide to fill up on gas on my way home in preparation for my hour plus drive tomorrow down to San Diego, California  for my doctor appointments. Should have procrastinated the fill up till tomorrow morning.

I am contently sitting in my car at Costco, waiting for the gas pump to  finish vomiting its gaseous juices into my car, when out of the corner of my eyes, I see this ginormous SUV invading my car’s personal space. Closer…closer…oh nooo you don’t…SKKREEEEECH!!! 

The feeling of content vaporizes in an instant as I swing open my car door, arms raised like I’m going to catch the winning touchdown to Superbowl, as this testosterone filled language exhales out my mouth in the form of, “What the f*^$ did YOU just do??!!” People three stalls over are looking now. I’d like to think it is the sound of metal  on metal and not my musical sing-songy voice of obsenity that turned them on.

(GASP) I am having an out of body experience. Everything is in slow motion and I look down on myself in shock. Did I really just drop the F-bomb? Who am I? What would Jesus Do? Well, thank goodness I’m not Jesus today.

“You’ve got to be f*$%^n kidding me. How do you take out a parked car at 5 mph?!” I say this more under my breath to myself than for the Ruh-tard (The Hangover) to hear. A little,old, proud Chinaman gets out of his car. Speaks close to no English and looks at the damage. No remorse. No apology. (Say, where is that penis clamp when I need it? Note: Exit Only blog below.)

(GASP) I re-enter into my body and feel the…anger. I hate Asian drivers. I can say this because I am Asian-American, and I’ve had ‘my people’ attempt to take me out and anything within a 50ft radius of their car in more than one occasion.  Actually, ‘Chi-merican’ is what my cheeky British friend calls me.  The difference being that I am a good driver, who sometimes drives faster than necessary, but I’ve never hit nor taken anyone  out. Haro? If you can’t speak English and you can take out a parked car going 5  mph, maybe you should downsize to a tricycle.

My doctor’s were very adamant about me not driving so soon,  fearing sudden braking, swerving or an…accident would jeopardize ‘B’idney. Well, I was doing pretty well if I do say so myself. Seriously, who the hell gets hit while in a parked car…at a gas station? Again with the language. Sorry. This vocabulary is such a strange concept. I have been known to reprimand my close friends who speak foully. I even discussed with Brian, ‘B’idney’s previous owner, who replied, “What?! Perhaps I should have mentioned that might happen.” Can I retrain a 34 year old kidney? But of course. Baby steps. I must admit as shocking as it was for me, it was kind of liberating for a moment.

So, although the incident…sucked, I guess the bright side is that ‘B’idney wasn’t injured, and neither was I. That’s the important thing. Could have been worse. Much worse.

EXIT ONLY

there is something daunting

when one doesn’t heed signs of warning

like when you’re at the edge of a cliff

and there is a sign displayed

BEWARE

so when I say certain body parts are made for

exit only

God really intended it for

EXIT ONLY

It’s 6 weeks post-transplant. I’m going in to get my last piece of medical device removed from my body. YAY! A stent located up in  my bladder. A stent that was placed up there to assist in avoiding complications during and post surgery. A stent that has been rubbing me the wrong way, literally.

I’m mortified. My legs have been spread and mounted  in stir-ups for nearly an hour now. Just being in that position is a violation to the molecules in the  room. Being in that position is a violation to me. The fact that some unknown male doctor is going to be all up in my Garden of Eden and then some with alien like tools of extraction is just unsettling. I am shy, although I should not be at this point. Being in the hospital as much as I have should cure anyone of personal space issues in the most private of areas.  

I’m still waiting. My dear friend, Loralee, is sitting next to me comforting me and documenting the event with her iPhone. An hour in the ‘hello I’m open’ position lends a lot of time to think.    I worry how much pain this really will be and then I wonder why on earth would anyone want to go into Urology and look at v-jay jay’s and weenies all day? …And so I pretend to read People magazine as I lay there…open.

My nurse sticks her head past the curtain to inform me that the team is on it’s way. I politely reply, “OK”, but in my head a red flag immediately goes up as I ponder the word, “team”. (‘Team’ can be a questionable term to a patient at a teaching hospital…I don’t care if this is a top ranked facility in the nation, it is a con with the procedure I am about to have performed). 

How many men does it take to unscrew a stent from me, considering I only have one part? I hear shuffling of feet. In comes the doctor. Then another. And another. Three. “Holy Crap!” escapes from my mouth before I could access the filter control in my brain. Dr. Lakin looks at me and smiles kindly. He makes a comment that sweet looking Asians aren’t supposed to speak like that.  He is at ease because he is not going to be working on me. He is going to be overlooking the procedure as the two juvenile residents are going to be practicing Stent removal 101 on Diana Lee. Doc Lakin assures me it’ll be very brief, like 3 seconds and feel like removing a Foley catheter. Tolerable.

YEEEOOOWWWWW!!!! I am about to explode through the roof like an angry superhero. Better yet, I’m about to slam ‘Resident Evil’ on the procedure table and shove a scope up his penis, lose the stent, shove the scope up again and cause irreparable mental damage to his psyche and his manhood.  I think this just might actually be the first time he’s EVER done this. When Doc Lakin  reminds           ‘Resident Evil’ that he’s got four hands with the aid of a resident assistant, because he looks like he’s going to drop an important device, I think ABORT!

Round one. ‘Resident Evil’ enters my ‘pee-pee’ (that’s what the nurse called it. Not to be confused with the v-jay jay, which is below the pee-pee) with a scope, which has a camera at the end, only to have the scope fall back out because he didn’t stick it up far enough. The camera is showing a shot of the room ceiling in the monitor. Lovely.

Round two. ‘Resident Evil’ attempt this task again. Success. The camera is turned on and I stare at the monitor as little prongs come out of the black snake-like scope, entering my bladder  in search of my stent. It latches onto the stent and as Lakin tells me to take  a deep breath, I feel douche bag rip the scope out of me before I could even inhale. “Oh David, shame on you. You lost the stent!” says Dr. Lakin. Strike two.

Round three. The pain of the scope going up into me is so excruciating painful, it feels like razor blades. The topical anesthetic does absolutely nothing for me. I’m looking at my bladder once again and the little monster prong that is about to clamp onto the stent. “Make sure it’s really latched on and grab hard” says Lakin. ‘Resident Evil’ has the poor stent so tight this time it’s folded in half. YEEOOOOWWWW. It’s out. I look at Loralee. She looks back at me sympathetically. That 3 seconds turned into at least 5 min of hell on earth. I can’t even imagine the men who have to suffer through this.

Which brings me to this kinda funny, but not so funny if you were a guy thing. There is a sign in my procedure room, which happens to be posted above the table contraption I lay on. I come to realize it’s a reminder for ‘Resident Evil’ and friends to do the following. I mean, how many male patients have walked out with ‘penile clamps’ still attached? I had to laugh…it was a nervous laugh.

So alas, I made it out alive although my ‘pee-pee’ is really pissed at me. No pun intended. I bleed and it hurts to the point of crying when I go to the bathroom. On the bright side, all foreign objects from the transplant have now been removed. Minus the ‘B’idney. He is a keeper. DO NOT TOUCH.

One Month

(Due to the graphic nature of the below photo, viewer discretion is advised for this post. Don’t say I didn’t warn you... You know you want to look.)

24 hours a day.

365 days a year.

‘B’idney

by any sensible measure

has a preposterously tough job.

January 9th marks one month from the big day when I received Brian’s kidney (‘B’idney), which now lives inside me amidst a bunch of female anatomy. I think ‘B’idney has hunkered down and is finally adjusting to being dominated by estrogen. I’m still in recovery mode, but the last few days I feel like I can hear my body telling me it’s getting stronger. Stronger, taller, livelier. Mischievous. Horny (thanx 'B'idney).

The kidneys perform the essential function of removing waste products from the blood and regulating the water fluid levels, blood pressure, electrolytes…the list goes on. My creatinine (not to be confused with creatine) level has hopefully stabilized to 1.2. The creatinine level in our blood reflects kidney function and how well the kidney is filtering all the toxins out. A normal person’s range is from .9 to 1.4. When I was on dialysis, it was at a whopping 12.9. It’s true. I felt like a large pile of turd.

‘B’idney in an ice bath getting cleaned up for the move in.

For transplant patients, particularly kidney recipients, the first 3 months is critical to whether my body will accept the kidney or not. Anything not part of the original formula is considered a foreign object, which the body will try to seek and destroy. Hence all the immuno-suppressants I’m on to trick my body that ‘B’idney is a friend, not foe. Our bodies really are an amazing machine. So tough, yet so fragile. It’s sacred like a temple, yet built like an artillery tank.

My lifesaver, Brian and Me

Keep it up, ‘B’idney. We’re one month in and going strong! You’ve got quite a fan club, the biggest one being me! Love you and thanking you for keeping me alive!