*Yay* for female surgeons!!

Well.. I met with the surgeon who will be performing my kidney transplant. WOW.. all I have to say is GO FEMALE SURGEONS. Not only did she have a great bedside manner (which is more than I can say for most of my previous surgeons), but she said she makes her incisions smaller than her male counterparts. She said she knows that we all care what we look like, and she tries to take that into consideration (I've never had a surgeon or radiologist care about this). Not that I don't already have tons of scars as it is, but at least she is being thoughtful and trying to minimize what will be another "victory scar" for me. It will probably be about a 6 or 8" across my lower abdomen.. not bad compared to the lung transplant scar I have.

I also met with the transplant nephrologist at Duke. This is the doc that will handle my care for awhile after transplant (before I return to my nephrologist in Charlotte). He wants to see what the kidney function test will show (results back tomorrow I think), before he decides on a date for surgery. He went into a lot of detail about that, but I will elaborate on that when I post the results. The test will basically give them a definitive answer as to how much kidney function I have left. The levels they usually check in my blood can only tell so much.

He is also thinking that a lot of my problem with nausea/weight loss could be due to a medication that I was put on for chronic rejection of my lungs last year. They drew my blood to check the level of that medication to see if it's high. It's not a medication that they usually check the level of, so it has to be sent to the Mayo Clinic to be tested. I won't get the results from that for awhile. He's thinking it might be a high level circulating in my blood because of my low kidney function. If it's high, he'll talk to my lung transplant pulmonologist to see if he will lower it.

The day went by pretty fast and we got home early. I was so happy about that. I didn't have to wait long at all. That's really a first for Duke!!

Jason was camera happy today.....



Contemplating my next chess move while we wait for my next blood draw. Jason beat me, but it was a close game. :)




I'm so thankful for ports. They save me from getting stuck so much!!




Riding the tram at Duke. They were supposed to stop running the tram in August, but thankfully they didn't!




A better pic of Jason... he actually looks sober in this one. Haha! Poor thing had to work until 2 am and then get up at 5:30 to take me to Duke.. he was exhausted.