Knittinggarden

After we successfully made it home, we got up bright and early the next day and left the house by 6:00 AM.  We needed to be at the UWMC lab at 7:30 and we live an hour away not counting traffic and rain, of which there is always some.  Pat had more appointments than I did, so I tagged along with him until I had to be somewhere else. We both supplied blood and urine samples, then went to the Cardiology Center, where he needed another Echocardiogram.  When you're on the transplant list or being screened for the transplant, they want to make sure that the organ is going to a person who has other healthy systems; i.e., heart and lungs.  So  Pat has had CTs, ultrasounds, cardiograms, etc. every year and it was suddenly decided that since his last one was last spring, another one was necessary.  They squeezed it into our busy schedule of appointments. It was interesting for me to watch (I don't think he could see anything) as the test is essentially an ultras...

In addition to having to get our acts together to leave town with little notice, we found an opportunity to rent our condo for a couple of months during our absence.  This meant that we would need to reorganize and move a lot of the stuff we've been leaving there out of closets and cupboards so renters will have space for their stuff.  Scrambling commenced and we got windows washed, carpet cleaned, closets emptied, garage tidied, and new dining table finished and set up (and old one gone.)  We also had to pack up the stuff we wanted to take home with us (the car might never have been so full and heavy.)  Pat had his final dialysis in the desert early on Friday morning, I went to my final exercise class and we were ready to leave a little after noon.  It was actually a bit rainy, so there were rainbows galore that morning. Our original plan was always to drive to Vegas this weekend to attend the UNLV graduation.  Our SIL, Mike, graduated with a degree ...

We matched, but not well enough.  It would be possible for me to donate to my husband, but it wouldn't be ideal since his blood reacted to the antigens in mine and that would have to be managed by medication and/or plasmapheresis, a "washing" of the blood to remove antibodies.  Either of these apparently would increase rejection risk and higher doses of the anti-rejection medications would be harder to tolerate.  All that meant we would likely go into an exchange pool and see if we matched others needing kidneys or other living donor volunteers.  This would increase the waiting time.  After almost two years of Pat being on the transplant list for a deceased donor with no results, further waiting was not what we were looking for. Then I received a call from the Transplant Donor Nurse asking if we would like to participate in a local exchange.  They had another two people in the Seattle area who were in the same boat as we were and who might be matches. ...

I've been MIA from the blogosphere for the last few months.  I've been knitting up a storm and spinning some, too, but documenting it here has taken a backseat to other things that have been on my mind.  I'll try to catch up and post some photos of things I'm especially proud of, but you can follow me on instagram @lboatsman to get the day to day images.  It's easier to snap a photo and post it with a couple of sentences than to create a blog post, even though I write them in my mind all the time. So, what's going on?  I'm going to write this story in a series of posts, as it won't be finished for awhile.  It started a couple of years ago, when my husband had to start dialysis due to kidney failure caused by childhood disease.  He had always taken good care of himself and managed to make it to age 60 before the inevitable occurred.  Dialysis is essentially intolerable but necessary for life to continue, so it's been tough.  He went onto the t...