Milestone Marked in Recovery From Kidney Surgery
By Emily Sachs, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.
Oct. 3–Graduation day was a low-key affair — just a short appointment, a cursory exam and not even a cap, much less a gown.
In this case, it was a doctor’s appointment, a medical exam and a hospital gown — no "Pomp and Circumstance" to speak of.
After three months with my new kidney, I reached my first milestone and it’s a significant one: The chances of rejection are greatest during the initial 90 days after transplant. If receiving a new kidney is akin to obtaining an education, then I just got my high school diploma.
At six months I will get another diploma, a college degree from my medical team. And June of next year will be my one-year checkup. If all goes well, it will mark the major end of my medical journey and the beginning of life anew.
After everything I’ve been through, it should be my Ph.D or M.D. without the thesis and title. (Of course, more than once I’ve been told I have enough material to write a book, so who knows?)
Like any graduate, my focus is on the future. A real graduation could come later — I am renewing my plans to go to graduate school next fall. It will have been four years after I initially was to go, but I’ve learned to accept life as it comes to me. I’ve written before about the broadening horizons that have come in the wake of my transplant. Yet they are coupled with the fear that I could lose everything if I lose this kidney.
Through nearly none of their own faults (except for those people who didn’t take their anti-rejection medications — unforgivable in my opinion), many people have lost transplanted organs.
I do everything possible not to be one of them, probably to the point of obsession. I exercise regularly, eat well and drink lots of water. Rest is another doctor’s order, but that isn’t coming as easily.
With the newfound energy that has come on like a happy virus the last few weeks, I am living it up in a way that I haven’t been able to in years. In addition to working, I’ve become active in my outings, even taking ballet, doing volunteer work and taking on extra side projects. Whatever I want to do, I do. I am able to now.
It is a joyous feeling and I’m told it’s radiating from my core — although to be fair, that might also be the constant perspiration from one of the post-transplant medications. A lot of the motivation to live it up is in my head.
Probably unwisely, I am pushing back the warnings about taking it easy and instead trying to pack life into a short period of unknown duration. On the off-chance this kidney quits, I don’t want to have missed a chance to live life while I could. I don’t want to go back to being sick and I don’t want to put myself there, but I also don’t want to close this window that has opened for me.
I suppose it’s a question we all grapple with: What does it mean to live life to the fullest?
For me I am just finding out — kind of like a teenager with a fresh driver’s license and a set of car keys. I made it through that stage of life with a lot of close calls and only one minor accident in my mom’s Subaru. I am hedging my bets that I will be able to do so again.
Of course, teens mistakenly think they are invincible whereas I know from experience that isn’t the case. I know when to stop and slow down. A recent weekend was spent at home, reading, napping and doing a jigsaw puzzle. It was a weekend straight out of Emily’s book of old.
So worry not: Wild and crazy isn’t my mantra. Not yet. That’s what grad night is for, right?
Update: We did it! Team IE Kidneys surpassed its goal and raised slightly more than $2,500 for the PKD Foundation at its Walk for PKD in Pasadena on Sept. 18. The LA walk raised just under $40,000. Nationwide, walks raised more than $1.3 million. Larry Ferris of San Bernardino and I were joined in the walk by Cathy Honseler of Running Springs. But it was Larry’s German Shepherd, Carly, who really set the pace and kept us going to the finish.
Staff writer Emily Sachs chronicles her recovery from a kidney transplant. Her column appears every other Monday. Contact her at (909) 386-3879.
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