Reading my writing

I just reread the entire blog from the beginning.  This was my first chance to do that.  I think for the most part I faithfully recorded the events of the past 5 days with maybe one exception.

I did not really document the anger I felt towards the surgeon, who was is the main guy, with respect to telling me what happened in the OR.  I actually made a joke about taking old radios apart and putting them back together.  Basically I didn't want to get all worked up and start screaming at random doctors because it was really just one (or two ) that I think messed up in communicating with me.

Yvonne's surgery started late, took long, and she remained in the OR for even more time because there was reason to be concerned about her very low blood pressure.  There was a lot of bleeding.

The loss of blood which caused the low blood pressure prevented them from starting the immune suppressing drugs in the OR as they typically do.  It was delayed a full day because the reaction to this drug is often fevers, rapid heartbeat, etc and this would not help if the patient was not yet stable.  I have to believe this decision was made because of concern about keeping Yvonne alive even if it meant losing the kidney, though in fairness they didn't think the kidney was in any danger.  But had it been less of a match that would not be the case.

This massive blood loss required a transfusion in the OR and another in Recovery. It wasn't until the 3rd transfusion the next afternoon that I knew ANY OF THIS!!!  And this is the point when we realized we hadn't heard the full story. It would take almost another 24 hours until we did.

I gave it to one surgeon who assisted in the transplant surgery when she came to check Yvonne on Saturday afternoon.  I know I raised my voice when I told her "I have 100 pages of health notes covering Yvonne over the past 19 years but for the last 2 days I have nothing but blank pages!!"

She recognized the level of my unhappiness and took the time to explain everything in sufficient detail.  She then tried to defend the Physician Assistant who told me on Thursday everything was routine but she saw the look on my face and gave up on that pretty quickly.

I bitched about this to a lot of doctors, nurses and janitors in the hospital but I always ended with "If they had to mess up on one thing I'd rather it be on talking to me." 

And I do mean that.  We're told this surgeon is the best and he insists on handling the difficult surgeries.  I may have been told it was routine because he came into it knowing the IV's would be an issue, the two prior transplant surgeries would create havoc and the blood would be everywhere.  He knew he had a good matching kidney(*) and basically, everything that happened was in a sense "routine" under those circumstances.  Fucking know-it-all:)

The * above is to note that it was this surgeon who called off a potential transplant several months ago because he felt it wasn't a "good enough match".  We received a phone call at 4 AM that a kidney was available that might go to Yvonne and at 8 AM it was indeed going to be hers and as we were in a taxi heading into the hospital driveway we got a call that this surgeon said "nope" and we went home to cry.

Wow... I get all worked up just writing about it.  Thank God he is so skilled in the OR and thank God for Cousin Kathy!

OK. Leaving now to pack up Yvonne and bring her home. I'm hoping the arrival of the heads of state of every country on the planet into my neighborhood doesn't cause any traffic jams.  Ha!  Yvonne just told me that FreshDirect cannot deliver to us until they all go home...  That's life in the Frozen Zone.