My partner and I went to Scripps, just to see about signing up for a transplant. He has stage 5 kidney failure. So he is doing dialysis, the next step is to transplant. It opened a whole new world for us. I am volunteering to give my kidney to him if I am a viable candidate. Blood type is one we needed to check, and it looks like we are not compatible. I am AB and he is B+ or something. This is assuming what we saw from the charts in the waiting room where we waited for the doctors and nurses. Taking it all in, there is a swap, if I cannot donate mine to him, I can donate it to another person and they can swap it with another donor who is compatible to him, one of them is cadaver donor, one who died in an operating table or had an accident and they have harvested his organ since they are a donor, and another is a high-risk donor, which merely meaning, like the person was incarcerated, had done drugs, is sick, has HIV or had multiple partners, or very active and had multiple risk factors, but it didn't mean they cannot donate their kidney, but yes you have to take note of all the risk factor.
It blew our minds, just the thought that they don't take out the kidneys they transplanted so a person can have 10 kidneys inside of them and can add more, they have to go through everything all over again, like attend a class for transplant and try to get on the list again. The life span of a kidney depends on how you take care of it, can be 10 years, can be a year, can be a couple of months, your body can reject a kidney. But a transplant means you can restart your life and try to live how you live before the kidney failure but on top of all of that you still need to be very careful, since you are going to be like a brand new baby with a new kidney, you would be very susceptible to germs, virus, sickness, etc.
So we were talking, why? Why do we need to go through all of that when he would be more hindered to live a more normal life, and just thinking of having to go through all of that after a year or two, we decided to just be on dialysis for life? Yes, our life is controlled by the hours needed to finish a cycle, right now, 9 hours per day, he works. Had to be home at a certain time since we are doing the in-home one, had to hook up before 7pm at least so he can finish by 4 am. Sure it is constricting our time to go out, we cannot go to drive in or movie theater anymore, or if we go to parties, had to go out late, we have to be sure we have to be home by 7pm or had to be sure we primed the machine before leaving the house. But other than that, we can still do what we want if just time our outings on a weekend when he didn't need to go to work the next day so we can be lazy about setting up the machine.
Going on the trip is another thing. We tried bringing that big ass Home Choice machine to Georgia, we have to bring the extra supplies, like the cassettes, extensions, and caps since they would only ship the bags. We are first in line in everything, we sit in the front, but wow so tiring, that thing is heavy. So we might try to train for the smaller machine which is the amia.
Just thought I'd write this so people can understand why sometimes I disappear for such a long period of time. My time is constricted with appointments, visit the doctor, visit the dialysis center. But I will try to make time as best as I could. If I forget to please PM me. Thank you all for your kind understanding of my situation.
