My Long Afternoon at UCLA

I arrived at UCLA Medical Center a little after noon yesterday. During the course of the next four hours, I met with a nephrologist, a social worker, and a transplant coordinator. But most of the time I sat and waited, starting and finishing a guidebook on Paris for my upcoming trip.

The nephrologist said that he would approve me for the kidney wait list and propose that I get a pancreas transplant later. In effect he is saying no to the latter, since the cut-off point for pancreas transplants is 55 and I'm already 51. By the time I get a kidney and recover from that, I may be too old for the pancreas. Besides, he said, the odds of me surviving a pancreas transplant or a simultaneous kidney-pancreas transplant with my existing heart condition are sketchy. His thinking was that since I have a donor who is willing to participate in a paired donorship, I should not wait around three years or more for a deceased donor's kidney and pancreas. Rather, I should get a kidney ASAP.

The transplant team does not meet for another two weeks, but it sure seems as if it's a done deal that I'm on the list. Of course, I've thought that before and I was wrong, but this sure seems right. Plus, the transplant coordinator told me to have my donor, Janet, contact the donor coordinator to begin testing. Before this, they would not let Janet proceed with testing until I had gotten on the list. If they're asking her to proceed, my getting on the list is now a matter of formality. Hallelujah!

A beautiful turn of events has given me hope about finding a donor whose blood type matches mine. As previously said in other posts, Janet is type A, and I'm type O, the most common type of mismatched pairs. O's can give to anyone, but can only receive from other O's. So in order for me to get a living donor, I either have to have an O donor step up on my behalf or do a swap with someone who needs an A donor but has an O. The latter case might occur if the recipient had antibodies to his O donor's blood and so couldn't use the donor's kidney.

A few weeks ago, I used a gift certificate for a facial. I had asked that Tracy, a gal I once worked with at Mr. and Ms. Day Spa, do the facial, but when I arrived for the appointment, I was told that Tracy had taken ill earlier that day and that Jennifer would be seeing me. Turns out, Jennifer's dad is a dialysis patient who also has an unmatched donor. Jennifer thought her father, Robert, was an A and the donor an O, but she gave me his number and I gave him a call. Turns out, he's had a transplant before, so perhaps it's the case that he developed antibodies to his donor's blood.

If the swap with Robert doesn't work out, I have two options as I see it: 1) wait until a suitable match for a swap is found somewhere in the country; the kidneys are then extracted from the donors and rushed to the recipients, or 2) move to a state with a much shorter wait time. The transplant coordinator said that I could wait up to 18 months for the former and as little as a few months for the latter. A lot better than seven to 10 years without a donor.

One of the major problems of moving to another state is the lack of a support system. As I learned with my heart surgery, the only person who will be there for me is Aaron. And without a support system, I will be taken off the list. That was what the social worker made very clear to me yesterday. They don't want someone on the list who has no one to care for her once the transplant is performed. So moving to another state may not be an option.