I just got the call -- I'm off to the hospital!!!

I'm back! Things were starting to get boring at the hospital since the head doctor insisted that my creatinine had to be at most 2 for me to leave even though I was feeling fine, didn't need any particular treatment and had had all the exams that were scheduled. So I was pretty happy to learn that my creatinine was down to precisely 2.0 yesterday morning! It's been going down steadily for the past week, and hopefully it will go down some more... I'm feeling full of energy and sooooooooooo happy to be off dialysis, hopefully forever! For those who care I'm currently on 10 mg Prograf (twice daily), 500 mg Cellcept (twice daily) and 8 mg Medrol (steroids - twice daily). That's a lot of immunosuppressive drugs even though the pills are tiny and I don't feel any side effects at all, though I know some are of the silent type - e.g. my blood pressure has risen sharply even though it was always fine on dialysis, so I'm also on 5mg Zestril (ACE inhibitor) which is doing a good job of controlling my BP. The docs say that when they start lowering the Prograf dose I'll be able to quit the Zestril. Hopefully I won't have to take steroids forever, they'll see if they can wean me off completely from them even though it's not really standard practice at my hospital just yet.

As for the transplant experience itself, I have to say that after a super-tough first three days, things haven't been bad at all, actually quite pleasant with a very nice team of nurses taking care of me and really not much pain or discomfort. I've had lots of visitors come by to support me and I've met some intersting people with pretty amazing transplant stories to share (not all kidney transplants). The scar is very long but so thin that it might become invisible after a couple of years. My lower belly is still a bit swollen two weeks after the operation but it's getting better - at first I couldn't button my jeans all the way up so I walked around holding it with one hand so that the entire world wouldn't know the color of my underware. They didn't perform a nephrectomy of my native kidneys so I guess that spared me much of the pain that others feel. Since then I've already taken a shower and driven my car, everything seems to be back to normal apart from a slight but constant tingling in the scar area.

So basically up until now it's been a real success story. I hope it stays that way!!! I've missed a couple of weeks on IHD, what's been up?

See you guys around and thanks for all your wonderful posts of encouragement!