Creatinine level, 1 month post-transplant

Okay, I admit it, I have not been in the mood lately to blog. I've just been staying busy doing other stuff around the house and keeping up on blogging has fallen way down on the priority list. This specific blog should have been published on November 24, when Rob had his regular clinic check-up visit. But...given that I was busy cleaning house, shopping, and organizing the kitchen in preparation for all the Thanksgiving cooking the next day, you can see why I let this blog slip.

So we celebrated 1 month of new life by starting out our day at the transplant clinic. Highlights of the visit included Rob getting his blood drawn, going pee in a little cup, and getting his tunneled permcath removed (for those who don't know what this is, see picture below).

By late morning, we had the lab results back and we were hoping to see his creatinine level drop even lower than it was previously. Sadly, it did not drop. It went up a couple notches to 2.1 - now, you may be asking yourself, why? The quick answer is that the Prograf is to blame. His prograf levels were way too high, and one of the side effects of Prograf is reduced kidney function. Grrrr. No worries, though, the nephrologist and surgeon assured us. They just reduced the amount of Prograf Rob will take every day. It's tricky though, because they can't reduce it too much, or else the other side effect would be rejection of the new kidney. So we were told that the next clinic visit and lab draw would be 2 weeks later, on Dec 8.

I almost forgot, Rob got his staples removed from his incision site on this day, too! This picture shows the general location where they insert the donated kidney. Rob's is a little lower than this picture and has more horizontal length than vertical. But the incision healed up very nicely and I think once the scar tissue totally takes over, Rob will have quite the awesome battle scar to brag about in the men's locker room. He's already got the huge scar from last year's bilateral double nephrectomy that runs from his sternum to below his belly button, a gnarly scar from his diaphragmatic hernia as a baby and another scar from his bowel obstruction when he was a teenager.

So that about sums up Rob's 1-month post-transplant clinic visit. Perhaps later I will write a blog post about our wonderful Thanksgiving day, which we celebrated at home with Rob's cousin Debby from VA and our local friend David. We ate some delicious turkey, stuffing, carrot souffle...the works!