Knittinggarden

Pat and I had our six month checkup yesterday and our partners, Steve and Janis, had theirs on July 13th.  They come a much longer way than we do to get to the UW Medical Center, so we drove in and met them for lunch last  Thursday.  It's so gratifying to get to "see" my former kidney in a healthy, grateful recipient.  We had a nice lunch and caught up on all the details. Our checkups went well, Pat has to have labs once a week for awhile to follow up on a white cell problem that hasn't been fully managed yet.  He apparently has a pretty strong immune system and while that is usually good, in this case, it can cause problems when the anti-rejection medication is too high in an effort to keep viruses, etc. at bay and pushes his white count so low that he's unable to  fight off any stray germ and that's dangerous.  The chemistry and balancing act is amazingly sophisticated and I wonder how people who received transplants years ago managed. Anyway...

July 4th was six months post surgery.  As we were visiting with my sister and brother-in-law and waiting for nightfall and fireworks, Pat realized what the date was and what it meant.  I guess it's good that we feel so relatively normal that we're not counting down the days! Things have been going well in general.  Pat had another problem with low white count but a medication adjustment, a shot, and a few days put him back into the safe range again.  Other than that and still feeling like going to sleep at 8:30, we're good.  The champagne was a celebratory prop; we don't really drink any more. 😉   Our six month check up will be on July 17th, so I'll report on that in a couple of weeks.  Steve and Janis (our exchange partners) have their check ups on the 13th and we're going to meet them for lunch that day.  It will be nice to catch up and get eyes on our respective former kidneys! In other news, I finished my Kimba Shawl and think ...