The pace is picking up! Thursday 7/30 I have my next round of tests and meetings, including the kidney CT. I have a Facebook account I resist using, but I did join the Living Donors Support Group and it’s been tremendously helpful already reading about other people’s experiences. On the good side it sounds like once I’m on the NKR list, most likely it will take only a few weeks to find a match as a B+ non-directed donor – so depending when the transplant center approves me, surgery could be as early as September!!! (not counting on it though) On the bad (but good to be prepared) side, many many donors experience serious fatigue lasting 6-9 months or longer, and many say that their heat tolerance has gone way down. Nobody regrets donating but they wish they had had a better idea going in.
The other bit of kidney news is that my transplant coordinator apologized and said she’d given me the wrong info about the voucher program – but it wasn’t just her, it’s a new program and I think the messaging was very unclear. The upshot is that you can indeed do a voucher but then you are not really a non-directed donor and an extra kidney doesn’t get released at the end – or at least not back to the transplant center? I’m still not sure I totally understand it, but I’m not going to do the voucher which would have been more complicated anyway. Nobody in my family has any history which would indicate they might need a kidney so I’m not too worried about it.
I had a very vivid nightmare last night about getting breast cancer. Sublimated anxiety perhaps. It’s such a privilege to be health enough to donate – I hope it all works out! I would be super-disappointed to be turned down now…