Diary of a Kidney Transplant - 2

Tuesday - K Day

No breakfast.

Meet the anaesthetist. She's surporised to see my CPAP machine - no mention of it in my notes (or she didn't spot the bits from the sleep disorder dept.) As a result of this, she marks my notes - "No benze...." in the allergy section - to remove a tranqiliser drug that's normally given as a premed. She also decides that they'll need to make sure they have space in the ITU for me to spend the night there after the op. A momentary panic for me that no space there means no operation.

When the notes come back with the nurses, written up for the premed drugs, there's a full list of 'what we normally prescribe'. It takes a fair bit of cajoling to get them to understand the anaesthetist's note, and when they do, the 'Tamazepan' on the first line is scrubbed out.

Maff off first around 9am. At about 12.30, I was taken down to the 'holding area'. I'm sharing this with a bloke who looks like a water bed - his whole body is bloated and looks full of fluid.

After what seems like forever, I see Maff asleep in his bed being wheeled past the door. A few minutes later, Roberto pops his head around the door, and looks happy.

A while later I get wheeled into the aneasthetist's room, where she knocks me out.

The next thing I remember is being in the 'Critical Care Unit' (next one down from ITU, where you still get extremely close attention all night from a dedicated nurse - heart and breathing monitors constantly on the go) with mum and suzy coming in to say good night. One of them must have brought me my phone, as it means I can give Maff a call - he's up on the regular ward. He seems to be in good form. I decide it's a good idea to send a text message to the 26 people who've all texted me during the day with best wishes. This takes a while, as I keep falling asleep between texts. I can't remember exactly what I wrote - something like the transplant had happened and was successful. I stupidly included the phrase 'Please don't reply to this' - main reason was that I knew it would fill up my phone, and I'd have to spend ages deleting the texts, when really I wanted to keep them.