Contentment

Saturday

Doing good today. They didn't get his JP drain (the drain he had coming out from his incision) out yesterday, so they took it out this morning. He said it wasn't as painful as he expected. He's dialyzing now. We'll go home when he finishes! 

The next few weeks will still be crazy. He has appts where they do blood work and monitor his medication and other levels on Mondays and Thursdays at the hospital in Salt Lake. Then he will have dialysis MWF in Provo in the afternoon until the kidney starts kicking in. So, we'll be back to IMC a LOT. And still have lots of schedule craziness. But that's okay. We have a working kidney! And after that everything else is just peanuts.

The weekend on-call nephrologist Dr. Srinivas came by. He said all the things we know- no rejection, antibodies look good, kidney was a great match and will take a while to wake up. He said they discovered some lesions on his pelvis in the CT scan- he was not worried about them. They could very well be calcium or other mineral deposits left from being on dialysis for so long. One of the (many) things your kidney does is control the levels of a lot of vitamins and minerals in your body. With that function being disrupted it’s likely that’s what caused the lesions/mineral build-up. He’s going to order more blood work to be drawn before we leave today. We will find out the results either on Monday at our clinic appt or Tuesday if they take til then to come back. Bryce asked what else could cause it. He said there was absolutely no cause for alarm- they’re just being thorough as a precaution. It is most likely nothing to worry about. The important thing was getting a perfect match, working kidney! He was very excited about that and said “No matter what the blood work ends up telling us, we will have a solution for it. That working kidney is the most important thing right now.” That was reassuring. 

We waited around for a while for the nurses to get everything in order for us to leave. Anyone who has ever been through the hospital discharge process will be able to relate...everything takes twice as long as it really should. Moff came for a little visit and it was good to see her. I think she enjoyed seeing Bryce doing a bit better than the last time she saw him (on day 2). The pills and med schedule is daunting. I try to remind myself that I felt that way about home dialysis and eventually we got the hang of it that we could literally do it in our sleep. A lot of the meds are familiar, he was on several of them when he had his last transplant.

It was so good to get home and walk in the door. The kids were so excited to see him- there really is nothing like being back together again after a prolonged separation. It always makes me appreciate even the most mundane days at home all together. Bryce's brother Brad came for a visit after we got home in the evening. He's always fun to be around and perked Bryce up a bit too. Our neighbors brought us a delicious dinner- which Bryce actually had an appetite for and enjoyed. He ate more than he had the whole rest of the week combined. 

Bryce was able to take a shower that night before we went to bed- it is quite the production though! I have to help with a lot of it and he is exhausted by the time he is done. We have to clean and redress his incision and drain site and then put his band around his waist to help it all stay tight and flat while it heals for the next 6 weeks. We laid in bed and watched some DVR, enjoyed being under our own roof. With our own kids. In our own bed. While the snow fell outside. It was a pretty content moment, one I hope I always remember.

Dialyzing on our last day

One weeks worth of medications

Daily Morning meds. He takes a few less for his evening round, but not many. 

Hopefully in 6 months we will be down to half this many.

In bed at home. This bed and this guy are two of my FAVORITE things.