Cathcing up on my transplant journey

I"M HOME!!! The transplant happened last Thursday, the 14th. We were originally scheduled for the 13th, but the transplant team had a cadaveric donor come in in the wee hours of the morning, and we got cancelled as we were checking in. Much panic ensued as we were all staying up in Denver and had no idea how long the delay was going to be. We got the call about 7:30 AM that we had been scheduled for the next morning with a checkin at 5:30 again. Back the next morning, and we made it to pre op and off to surgery. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in recovery. The new kidney was in and working! According to the surgeon, it took off as soon as he hooked the blood supply up to it. From recovery it was off to the transplant recovery floor and in to a semi private room. All the private rooms were full, my donor got the last one. My fault for waking up last. So far, so good. I'm having a bit of pain from the surgical site, but nothing really that intense, I think I used the pain pump about 4 times the first day, mostly because they were moving me around in the bed and suggested I be proactive about it rather than reacting when the pain got too intense. I used the pain pump those 4 times and then 2 on Friday, and that's the last time I used it. Thursday and Friday went well with me on clear liquids and feeling pretty good. Saturday morning at about 2 AM I started vomiting. That kept up through Saturday and into Sunday when the Drs decided to put a tube down my nose to suction my stomach and put me on a no food or fluid by mouth diet. Now all this time, my kidney is working gangbusters. I still had the Foley in but production was just awesome! And my creatinine was down from 18 before surgery to 1.8 on Sunday. I'm jazzed, if I could just stop puking! At this point, I still had not had a bowel movement, and the Drs were suspecting that this was the cause. On Monday, I was determined that we were going to get this stuff moving. The Drs were thinking that my GI tract was just being persnickety about waking up after the surgery. I didn't care, I wanted that damn tube out of my nose. We hit my bowels with everything we could think of, suppositorys, enemas, Walking the halls, anything we could think of. No luck on Monday, but Tuesday, after another enema, we finally has success! And also on Monday, I got the Foley out and was able to move urine on my own. So it looked like we were doing pretty well, until they started doing a bladder scan after every trip to the bathroom. The scan was showing that I wasn't clearing my bladder enough. They were concerned that I would be putting back pressure on the surgical seam between the kidney and the bladder, and that would be a bad thing. So Tuesday the Foley went back in for another day. Wednesday morning, I thought I felt well enough to get the nose tube out. After discussing how I was doing with the Drs, we clamped it off for 4 hours to see how I tolerated it. After 4 hours, I wasn't puking and out the tube came, but left me with a heck of a sore throat and esophagus. It felt like terrible heartburn every time I swallowed. Now all we have to do is get the Foley out, that took till Thursday morning. And OBTW, I even get to order real food of the hospital menu on Wednesday, what a treat! So Thursday, I'm basically line and tube free! All is going well, my creatinine has dropped to 1.4. Thursday I get to take a real shower, which beats the heck out of the stuff they give you to do a bed bath. Thursday morning I get my pharmacy training, training from my transplant coordinator and hands on training from my floor nurse. Once all that is taken care of, they are ready to let me go home. Unfortunately, I had clinic scheduled for Friday morning, and nothing I could do would talk them out of me being there. I was hoping that since they had me in the hospital Thursday, and had run labs, that Friday would be too close. No deal. So we decided to stay up in Denver one more night and come home on Friday. Friday morning, we hit the lab at 7 for blood draw, went and checked into the transplant clinic and then went to have breakfast while we waited for the labs to come back. No problems came up at clinic and they sent us home by 9. I'm feeling really well with a creatinine this morning of 1.5 and so glad to be home.