So this week included my work up at MGH. Initially I thought it would include all the same testing I had on my full day work up at Lahey a few months ago. Most of which was nothing all that difficult, but for that darn stress test... that was not fun. As it turned out I only had to do half the blood work (11 vials) and none of the other tests. So the rest of the day was all listening to a lecture about kidney transplant and then meeting with the team at MGH one at a time, interview style.
It will be two weeks before I hear back as to whether or not I will be accepted as a patient at MGH. I have no reason to believe I won't be, after all... if Lahey would have me why wouldn't MGH, but there are formalities to it all and so I must wait for them to meet and discuss me as a patient.
I did learn a few new things at MGH. For example that they are doing some cutting edge stuff there that few others are doing. This includes an interesting approach to certain qualifying transplants involving half match siblings. Half match means that at least three of six antigens are identical. We all get six antigens from our parents, three from each parent. Siblings have something like a one in four chance of being a half match, but the likely hood that two non related people will be a half match is pretty low as there are literally thousands of antigens out there.
If your donor is a half match sibling MGH offers an option where they would not only transplant the kidney but would also transplant a small amount of the donors bone marrow. This some how eliminates the need for certain rejection medications. I don't know that my donor will be a sibling or that my sibling would be a willing participant in such an option, but just that they are doing this kind of cutting edge stuff makes me excited about the fact that I've chosen MGH over Lahey.
There was another new piece of information I learned at MGH... this one is actually a bit of bad news and I've spent the last few days pondering how exactly I should deal with this unfortunate bit of information. It turns out that following my transplant I won't be able to eat my favorite food ever again. Sushi. Yep... no more sushi after the transplant. I think sometime between now and the transplant I'll have to have a big sushi party. Maybe an all day sushi affair. I can not tell you how sad this makes me... nothing can ever replace the full on food joy I receive from eating sushi. People try to comfort me by saying things like: "Well you can still eat California rolls" but come on.. that shit's not real sushi.
My name is Bil... and I have kidney disease and a hankerin for some sushi.
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