Liveblogging from the hospital (sortoff)

Welcome to the 21st century. Remember when they were convinced mobile phones would harm all that delicate medical equipment? Well, the hospital we’re staying in has free wi-fi on every floor. Which is how I can finally blog about our upcoming operation, after yet another fsckup at our webhost meant the site was offline once again. As I said last week, we’re going in for a kidney transplant tomorrow and so have been a bit too busy preparing to blog too much. On Thursday we were told how it was going to happen and it’s quite fascinating. Cue medical horror story; if you’re squemish, look away now…

As the donor, I’m going to be prepped first, tomorrow morning at half-seven. They’ll sedate me, then make an incision in my belly on the right side, more or less above my kidney. They’ll then cut their way between, but not through the various layers of stomach muscles until they come to the membrame that holds my guts together. This is carefully scooped aside (using “a kind of giant spatula” as the surgeon called it) and the kidney is then laid bare. To seperate it from its environment the various adhesive tissues anchoring it have to be cut away, and the incoming and outcoming artery, as well as the urenal duct to the bladder have to be take out as well. Everything then is clamped down and sown up nicely, the surgeons retrace their steps and leave me with one kidney less and a neat scar…

The kidney meanwhile is flushed clean, filled with a special presevative and put in an icebox in the operating room. Once it’s ready for transplantion S. is prepped for surgery and brought in. Surprisingly the kidney won’t actually be implanted in the same place as her old kidneys, nor will these be removed. Instead it will be put in the lower abdomen, near one of the legs, so it can be hooked up to a nice juicy leg artery and has a relatively short route to the bladder and such. Ironically, this makes the operation for her much less tough than for me. Once it’s in and hooked up it immediately starts working. It literally fills up with blood within a minute or so, before the surgeons have even closed her up…

So that’s my Tuesday. I’m expected to feel pretty horrible afterwards, with S. less horrid because the new kidney is expected to make a big impact on her well being. But I’m still probably going to be out of the hospital a couple of days before her…