I was visited by one of the renal transplant coordinators just as breakfast was served, but this turned out to be bad timing as I was having great trouble trying to sit up to eat. I was able to tilt the bed up but I just couldn’t get comfortable and was at that time experiencing the worst pain of my whole stay. It did subside after a few minutes so I was able to conduct a rational conversation.
I asked her just how many patients they had in their ‘catchment’ which is basically all of central NZ. The response was that there are about 180 waiting for a transplant but there are only 20-odd transplants a year in this catchment. Of these about half are from live donors with about one third of these from non-directed donors (i.e. unknown by the recipient).
Another group from the surgery team called in shortly after, reiterating the need to get up and about as soon as possible, so I decided that I would try this as soon as they left. However once they had left I immediately encountered a problem – I couldn’t figure out how to lower the side of the bed and there was no way I was going to climb over it. I had also asked what I was to do with the massage cuffs, and they had shown me that they were just Velcroed on, so were no problem to remove.
Soon the daytime nurse came by and lowered the side of the bed for me. The release catch was low down near my feet, so there was no way I was going to be able to do that unaided. That done she removed the massage cuffs for me and waited as I gingerly manipulated the catheter tube around my legs to sit on the edge and eventually stand beside the bed. Once I was on my feet, she left me to have a bit of a walk around in the room. I was quite comfortable doing this, but because I had to carry the catheter bag which was quite full at this stage and quite heavy I didn’t pursue this for very long. Then I had the rather challenging task of getting back into bed without getting tangled up in the catheter tube and making sure it didn’t have any kinks in it. This took quite a while and I felt quite exhausted after that. I didn’t even attempt to put the massage cuffs back on as that required bending over double to reach my ankles, which I wasn’t prepared to do just yet.
After lunch I had another visit from one of the surgeons who had come to remove the catheter – presumably my success in getting out of bed had been communicated back to the surgical team. She also asked for me to report back once I had successfully been to the toilet just to confirm that all was well. I decided to wait until my next pain relief before attempting to get out of bed again – actually it was the getting back in that was more painful but I never did quite work out why that was. Anyway the toilet trip was successful, so I reported this to the nurse.
Later that afternoon I was visited by the renal physician who had examined me very early in the process. He reported that the recipient was doing very well. Otherwise he was enquiring about my progress and general well-being. The conversation turned to who what sort of people were potential kidney donors and he mentioned that there was some recent research in the US that categorised live donors as coming from somewhat higher socio-economic groups since those lower down were often not in a good enough financial position to be able to afford the time off work. He did comment that this may not be the case in NZ, since there was support from WINZ for such donors.
My next visitor for the day was my wife, who arrived before dinner with a coffee and cake. The coffee was much appreciated, as otherwise all that is offered is stewed tea from a pot, instant coffee or unsweetened Milo. Shortly after, the surgeon called in again and prescribed a (half) sleeping tablet if I needed it. I decided to wait until the nurse change-over at 11 before I took it after a last trip to the toilet. It didn’t seem to help much as I awoke before 3:00am, and then was woken again at 3:30am for my observations.
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