346) Post Transplant Clinic

March 18, 2009
Wednesday

Morning: I'm up at 7:15 to weigh, pee, BP, and BG, and eat graham crackers before 8:00, when I must take my meds. I am totally on time this time. HOORAY for the Jakster! Then I read my email from both accounts, & Facebook.

It is time for a nap... so I lay down on the couch and snooze from 9 to 11:30. Very deep sleep except for waking up to pee every hour (this morning).

I have to get up and get ready to go to Transplant Clinic for a 2 o'clock appointment. In the waiting room we sit across from Rodney and Kelly. He got the first of the fabulous four kidneys while we were at NAMC and I got the last one. He reports that Dr. Lewis took our his staples today and it feels great. These folks are from S. Austin too, so we all imagine we'll be seeing each other on down the road.

We meet Janie the Registrar, who we immediately find is another one of "us" and we click and I refer her to Hats.com when she mentions liking fedoras but can't find one for her small head. She has a daughter who works for DARS but not in state office. When they grew up she said "find a career you love and one that makes the world a better place". A great sending off for when the birds leave the nest.

Janie takes us over to meet Marlene the LVN with the smartly painted nails, getting ready to go to Florida tomorrow to a friend's wedding. She is very sweet and gentle and asks us a bunch of questions about how I am "right now" and takes my BP (124/70), temp. (99) and gets us ready to see Bernadette, the Post Transplant Coordinator. This place runs like the swiss railroad. We move along and Bernadette talks to us in the treatment room. She has our printed-up new meds sheet and two more appointments: for Labs on Saturday and another Clinic appt next Friday. She has me hold out my hands, palms forward, and notices a slight tremor in my left hand. She asks about breathing, pain level, problems, back pain, and has me describe the pain and level it on a self-anchored scale. Then she answers a few of our questions, as follows: First I ask about if the Nuerol change has to do with increased Creatinine and she says "No. It has to do with the 3 dosage is too high for me which, which doesn't effect my creatine level"

1. How do you get that ugly tape mark off? Alcohol wipes!
2. What about my weeping sutures? Ask Dr. Lewis
3. Should we was our fruit with fruit wash? Nope!
4. Should we have our house sanitized? Nope! However, we should wipe down our counters completely BEFORE food prep.
5. I'm peeing more than drinking! Don't worry about it now. Your still getting puff weight off. That 2000 and 500 stuff is for "down the road".

When she looks at my charting she gets confused about how I have documented some of my fluid intake / outgo and tells me to do it however I want as long as the TOTALs are entered at the daily total spaces at the end of the day.

Dr. Lewis comes in and after some more brief questioning and looking in my mouth, he says, "Jump up on the bed, young man", where he listens to my lungs and heart, asks about my breathing, pain level, etc. He tells me my Creatinine is at 1.4 last labs and I reminded him that before that it was at 1.3 and he shakes his head and says they're virtually the same; a change of one tenth could be time of day, or even a machine thing. "Don't worry about it."

He had me lay back and checked my incision and prodded around down there... changed my dressing and said I don't have to keep it dressed when it is not weeping. Ah... a Zen Koan! My question becomes one of "...if the wound is dressed how will I know it is still weeping, Master?" These kinds of Koans take us, in our meditation to a place where the truth reveals itself, unobstructed by oppositions in our little brains; so that, like creativity, the insight will arise naturally in me. I can hardly wait for this new insight.

I remind Dr. Lewis about signing a script for those little blood sugar strips and he says I don't need to check my BG anymore as far as he is concerned. WOW! Lizzie and look at each other with little married people grins, and I say "Great! One thing to take off the schedule every day" and then Dr. Lewis smiles. We're done for today and he'll see me again next Friday. Of course we are getting outa there right at rush hour but the traffic isn't too bad cause it is Spring Break from The University. Right after we arrive home, Bernadette calls to say Dr. Lewis is changing some more of the meds and she and Liz work that out.

We get home about 5:45 pm. What a nice day! Another day another mile.