I had my kidney out- Hospital Edition

It's been three weeks since our big transplant surgery. In the lead up to that, Matt, Kelsey, GW, Nana, Shaoshu and I had one of the best Christmases on record. Everyone was very mellow, we ate a lot of egg dishes and candy, got to sit around the fire, sleep, laugh and enjoy eachother's company. I think everyone was trying not to be nervous about their respective roles, and it was just really nice to reconnect a little before the surgery. I had plenty of time to get in my final work outs (no missed days in December!). A couple days before surgery, Kelsey and GW and GW's parents moved into an apartment closer to the hospital. This was obviously a good choice long term, but my house felt really empty without them.

The day before surgery, I was on a liquid diet, so Matt and I had a quiet day at home. During the day, I felt quite brave, and was getting intermittent check ins from all corners. Thanks to everyone who called and texted. But as the day started to fade, and I tried to pack a bag, and think about sleeping before my 4am wake up call... well, sleep didn't come easily. Packing a bag was hard. Will I be able to wear clothes? (Answer, nah, a hospital gown is fine, but my baggiest PJs helped me get home). What will I need to sleep? (eye mask and ear plugs) Books? TV? What will I feel like watching and doing? What will Matt need to keep him busy while I am healing? Will he spend the night? In the end, we each packed basically an overnight bag, which seemed disconcertingly light. Weeks before I had assured Matt that if everything went as planned, he could go home to sleep at night, but the day before hand, I just wasn't so confident that I would feel brave in an empty hospital room at night. He readily agreed to come prepared to stay for a while.

As the evening wore on, Matt went to fix something in the garage (read: he was anxious), and GW sent me a great short video of Niel DeGrasse Tyson, which reminded me I should watch Cosmos. I've been reading Death by Blackhole, which has the right amount of funny and technical for reading until I am quite sleepy, and Cosmos has a similar tone of optimistic wonderment that helped take my mind off of what was coming.

I should probably mention here that I assumed I would be pretty much obliterated by this surgery. I was hoping I would be too drugged to remember how much pain I was in, and I was very afraid that I would be making a slow crawl back to self sufficiency. I was told recovery takes 2-6 weeks, which I was taking to mean I might be able to walk, feed myself, and possibly sit at a computer for a few hours after a month. All this kinda made me think that the start point was going to be pretty bad. I was resigned to all of this, I figured it was a trade for a fraction of the suffering GW had to deal with, I would just get it in one big dose. I had just made up my mind to go through with it, even when I wasn't feeling especially brave, like at midnight the night before surgery.

Somehow we slept, albeit briefly, because check-in was at 5:30am. No traffic at that time. I decided to look forward to seeing Kelsey and GW and his parents, and try not to think about... you know... We got settled into a room on the transplant floor, that was a couple doors down from GW. I got hugs from everyone, which was so good. You know how frail you feel after eating nothing but juice for 24 hours? Yeah, not like a brave person, so the hugs really helped. And the hospital room was just too bright, too foreign, not to get a little antsy. When they came to put my IV, the nurse asked if I wanted lidocaine to numb the spot. I started to say no, and then thought 'I'm having a hard enough time holding it together, why not just let this lady be nice to me?' I decided right then I would take anything I was offered that seemed like it would help, even if it might make me seem super wimpy. I didn't want to be tearing up over an IV, or anything else. It's courageous enough just to be the donor, without trying to be a tough guy the whole time too.

I poked my head in to GW's room, where he was cacooned under heated blankets, also trying not to be nervous. The were supposed to take me down an hour before him, so we said our goodbyes, and I waited in my bed for someone to wheel me away. Both Matt and I were feeling at little giddy with anxiety by this point. Being there, I really knew I was here to Do Some Good, everyone was being terrifically kind, but... OMG, they were about to cut my guts out! I was wheeled into the pre-op room, which was full of nervous middle age people in gowns, some of them shuffling into the restroom, most of them lying in their own hospital beds with a loved one looking on. Matt and I were trying to feel youthful and brave, when another bed rolled in- for whatever crazy reason, they brought GW down an hour early. I know that must have been torture for him, but I was SO happy to see him. He got parked next to me, so I got extra hugs from Kelsey, and we could keep joking and chatting up to the last minute. He made my nurse bring me a Bair Hug- the inflating, warm air circulating, blanket. The nurse told him that he could wear his beanie, which made us realize we should have got Renal Riot hats for the big day. My anesthesiologist stopped by to chat, and was just amazed to see us carrying on like this right before surgery. All the nursing staff and surgeons were loving it. This is where we took the high five picture that got a couple hundred FB likes (not to mention instagram). The nurse offered to set our families up in a family waiting room, where they could get updates from surgery. It felt like we were getting VIP treatment.

And then they wheeled me in. I got one last hug and kiss from Matt and Kels, and a high five from GW. With no one holding my hand or encouraging me, I suddenly felt very alone, very tiny, and not especially brave. I think the hallways to the OR might be one of the longest hallways in all of Seattle. I was told that when we got in the room, the anesthesiologist would give me something to "calm down" prior to starting surgery, so I figured I just had to get in there, and things would take their course. The OR nurse introduced herself on the way (really, we had that much time rolling down this hallway), and she told me to expect some of the other people in the room (I have no idea who now, but I was glad she mentioned that). The asked me to move myself onto the operating table. By now I almost forgot that I was still able bodied for a few minutes, and happily did the sideways scoot. They hooked up my IV, told me they were going to do some... other stuff, who knows... and I had a last minute sense of calm...

...The next thing I remember, was the recover room. A nurse had come to chat with me, and I was amazed that my mouth seemed to be able to make words. This is probably because my nearest experience with surgery was having my wisdom teeth out, when my mouth was packed with cotton. I remember thinking I felt more lucid than I expected, and wasn't in pain yet, although I don't remember having my eyes open. Someone a few beds down was crying for their mother, and the nurse told me not to worry, that person was confused. to which I said, "I understand that. I'm feeling pretty confused myself..." But I knew, I knew, my mom was nearby and was going to give me a hug really soon.

In my memory, I was magically transported to my hospital room, where people (I assume Matt, and Kelsey and my parents where there) told me I was looking pretty good. I remember thinking I felt pretty good considering. I was allowed to eat ice chips which seemed nice, I felt thirsty and my throat was a bit sore. The nurse wanted to look at my incisions. I was a little afraid to see, but there was a big pressure bandage over my hips, so the big cut was a mystery for now. The little cuts had bloody gauze under clear plastic sticker things. I would later learn that under that were steristrips, basically the sticker versions of stitches. Overall, it looked worse than I hoped, but much better than expected. I got a button to administer my own pain meds, and like I said, I had determined I didn't really need to tough out feeling discomfort. Everyone else already had heard the good news, but at some point I was told (and remembered) that GW's new kidney was working. And working really well. Hooray!

A weird thing that the night shift nurse explained to me was that some of these drugs don't necessarily make a person sleepy. By the evening, I had been up and chatting with visitors most of the day. Matt has asked for a cot to be brought in to sleep next to me. I had barely slept the night before, and I just... didn't feel sleepy. My throat was hurting more now, from the intubation, and my (wonderful) nurse brought me nasal spray for my itchy nose, and lidocaine lozenges for my throat. I sat up and watched Star Trek: Next Generation and Kung Fu Panda cartoons with a few cat naps for most of the night. When the nurse would come in and wake Matt up (I was usually awake), he would hold my hand across the gap in the beds. I tell you, there is something really comforting and encouraging about having someone hold your hand while we are in a hospital bed.

Later that night, GW called me from down the hall. He wanted to know I was doing ok. His first question on waking up was about me, but he wanted to check on me himself. And then he told me he was doing really well. The kidney was working so well, he was dropping 30mL of fluid a minute for most of the day. And he said he felt pretty good. And I gotta tell you- that was the moment that I felt like it was worth it.

The next couple days were punctuated by a number of firsts. The drugs I was on made it terribly hard for me to focus on anything, so time seemed to move shockingly slowly. By the night of surgery I stood beside my bed for the first time. The next day I was allowed to eat Jello, my first food since Saturday. I took a few steps out of bed. The surgeons came to check on me, and told me I could eat my first solid food that afternoon. I took my first pain pills by mouth. Shaoshu came to visit, Kelsey went home to sleep. I walked down the hall to see GW. He came down the hall to see me. I went to the bathroom myself. I got to use body wipes to "bathe." A resident came by to take off the big bandages, revealing a few bloody steristrips hiding tiny cuts. I learned how to cough with a pillow pressed on my stomach. I put on underwear. I started walking laps of the hallway, gingerly holding my stomach in place.

The day after surgery, the surgeons, giddy from seeing GW's success, popped into to brag about my kidney and told me I could probably go home the next day. This sounded crazy to me, but the next day, we had found a painkiller that I could tolerate, I was walking short distances confidently and could eat food. Although it seemed comfortable to have a nurse prepared to answer at the push of a button, I knew both Matt and I would sleep better at home, so we left the hospital around 2:30 that afternoon. A pre-med volunteer wheeled me down to the car. I was wearing my biggest PJs, had a pillow between my stomach at the seat belt, and we timed our exit to shortly after my dose of painkiller.

I'll give more updates on the rest of recovery later soon, but for now, I'm back to job hunting and working, and about to head over to Nana's for tea.

Teefs!

We begin, as is traditional, with a list of all the new things Tyler has going on for him. And because it's been two weeks since I've written anything, it's a pretty long list.

For starters, he's quite recently started babbling. Babbling is one of those critical development stages they tell us parents to be vigilant for. It's when they start making consonant-vowel combinations over and over. To the layman, this means Tyler can say Mama! Well, technically he can say mamamamamamama, but the thrill is still the same. He's become a regular chatterbox, mama-ing and raspberry-ing like it's going out of style. It's super cute.

He's also started getting a tooth, we think. He's got a little rough spot on his bottom jaw, on his right, I think. He's definitely a little bit more fussy than he has been in the past, but he's still sleeping most of the night, with the exception of strange times when he actually manages to roll himself onto his stomach while trying to sleep.

A detour: let me tell you about Tyler going to sleep. Have you ever been so tired you've tried to eat your own foot? Tyler has. Does it all the time. We'll put him down for his sleep and he'll roll left and right and munch on his hand for a while, but when that's not quite enough, he'll kick up his legs, grab a foot, and stuff the whole thing into his mouth while rolling around and making cute sounds. It's all Jess and I can do to keep from breaking out laughing while he is trying to rest. And then sometimes he'll roll on his side and then straighten his body out and roll to his stomach. And Tyler knows that stomachs are for exercise time, not sleep time, though, he's past the real danger zone for SIDS. He's really good at getting from his back to his stomach at this point, but he hasn't quite figured out the other way around yet, so we'll have to wake up and flip him over sometimes. Other than that, though, he still sleeps through the night.

Anyway, yeah, a tooth. We'll put up some pictures when we can see it.

Tyler has also learned how to get revenge for all the nomming we've been doing to him. He's started to chew on Jessie at bedtime. She'll go in for some cheek bites and he'll get all excited and start chewing on her chin or cheek or whatever other part of her face is close enough to get in his mouth, all while making serious grunting-effort noises. It's a riot. Yes, we got some video, it'll probably be up on facebook soon.

He's also starting to get more mobile, though he's still not a threat to disappear on you if you turn your back. He's getting better at turning and scooching himself backwards via a combination of pushups and superman poses. I don't think he's figured out how to use all of it for navigation, yet, but the exercise is really good for him.

Kelsey has been a fantastic babysitter this past week. Even with some early teething he's always been happy and well fed and well rested when we get home. Tyler likes her, too. He smiles when she comes over to see him and doesn't even fuss a little when she is in charge. Evidently babies don't get afraid of strangers until 8 to 10 months. We were going to maybe try and babysit Grant while his parents went out this weekend, but Grant is firmly in the 'don't like strangers' zone, and he wasn't having any of our playtime when we tried an experiment yesterday. So it looks like we may have picked the perfect time to start sending Tyler off to Day care, before he can get too anxious about something new.

That's right, just a few more weeks and Tyler starts day care. Empty house! That will be really weird! Kelsey is going to help us pick out some more cute outfits for him. We got the advice that the cuter he is, the more attention he'll get from his teacher, so we'll get the fashion-conscious sister to help us dress him up all adorable.

Also on the horizon, solid food! We're thinking about giving it a try tomorrow when we have both Kelsey and Grandma to play witness to the mess. I'll do my best to keep the mess to a minimum, though we'll almost certainly have to give him a bath afterwords.

Non-baby Micro-News! We went out on Kayaks on town lake with some friends from work. Nice cool water, and we got to hang out under the bridges downtown. A blast, I liked it more than tubing, actually. There are no video games coming out. I'm playing some older ones to relax, but it's as dry as a Texas summer, I tell you what. Jess got me an ice-cream maker. I've used it to make Orange Sherbet already, and there's some vanilla bean ice cream in the fridge ready to get turned tonight. I completed another song! I'll post it up here a bit later, but we're going to take Kelsey out to the Farmer's market and then get some hamburgers in a bit, and then go pick up grandma from the airport.

-N

Data Entry

As it turns out, a large part of my job is data entry, which, when you're working in a non-profit who often has to prove that it's doing well, can be a very important task. Being the youngest person in my department by about 30 years, easily, I am the most computer literate person, which I feel is saying something because I've never thought of myself as much of a Noel.
But now I'm actually kind of excited about it, because I have my own little project to work on. As you may or may not know, I work at a food pantry. If people qualify, they are able to come in to St Francis House once a month and take a certain amount of food according to how many people are in their household. We have the food split up into the food pyramid...basically, sort of. We have sweets, grains, vegetables, fruits, and proteins. It is sort of loose sometimes, depending on what kind of donations we receive that day/week/month.
The last few months we've had record amounts of people coming in(over 100 a day, and that's families, not individual people), and we seem to be going through food really quickly. There is talk about trying to switch up the way we do things, and make people's amount of food based on weight, instead of category. So now it's my job to go through 6 months worth of data and look at each day and average the weight for each family size, then I have to see if there would be an issue of changing the system, and then decide how much weight each family would conceivably get.
So needless to say I can only do data entry for so many hours in a day (i.e. why I'm blogging), but I like looking at the information and seeing averages already.
I can already foresee some issues with making the food distribution weight oriented. For instance, every once in a while we get meat, and some one could easily just take all the meat that their weight allows, and then there wouldn't be enough for everyone else. I may recommend weight by category. But I'm working backwards from August, and I've only gotten to June, so I have some more work to get through.
This job also seems to make me think about food a lot, which may or may not be a good thing. I have become more aware of what kinds of foods are hard for people to get, and what is more important to a diet. Fresh is also really hard to come around. I love the idea of being organic and locally grown, but there's just no way it's possible with prices the way they are, especially in a place like Alaska in the winter.

Other than that, just chugging along at work, learning more every day. Talked to mom the other day about possibly going back to school for a masters in Program Management. The more I think about it, the more appealing it gets, especially because AmeriCorps will give me a little money to go back to school. We'll see, depends on what is available after my year of service. For now though, I think I'll enjoy the fact that I don't have homework to finish up on Sunday nights.

My Turn! Much has happened!

While Noel has been blogging the 12 days of Europe, I've been not blogging. More like, I've been too busy to need to interject into Noel's narrative, but now so many things have come and gone, I'm just going to jump in an share, and then we can get back to the exciting Noel stories.

WISC: We had a potluck/planning meeting. I'd had to postpone this one week to improve attendance, but we've decided on a new format (hostess' choice), and mapped out a calender for the months to come. Success! All this the day before we left for the...

Wood Fire Kiln: My ceramics class came to an end as we took our pots out to the kiln to fire them. The firing was fun, we had a good group (including Joe, our teacher,'s parents- who came bearing cookies), and saw a lot of wildlife. I had the 4am-noon shifts both days, which I managed with my partner- Matt hung around splitting wood. Besides the snakes, baby robins and other birds, we rescued a pair of unweaned kittens we found beneath the wood pile. Rescued them to the Animal Rescue League that is, although both Matt and I felt a bit emotional about letting them go. I am pleased with how this batch of ceramics came out- I must have learned a lot about what to expect from last time. (The matching cups in the photo were Joe's- he's made 250 as favors for his wedding. Yeah.) We unloaded 72hrs after we stopped firing (the ceramics were still warm!) (Not hot, Mom), to have time before we left for...

Kelsey's Graduation! (and visiting in-laws!)- 3 for 3- and none of them moved back home (yet... for long). Mom and Dad and successful empty nesters! While the stated purpose was to see Kelsey graduate (BA in Communications- Nice work!), we actually got to hang out with Noel and Jessie and Matt's Dad and step-mom a lot. While not eating awesome food (in Saulsalito, or Lagunitas Brewery, Ghiradelli Square or home cooked by my favorite greek chef), we took in the Golden Gate Bridge, stopped at the Ferry Terminal Market, rode street cars and trolley's in San Fransisco and got to spend time with the family. Although we had some delays on the way home, we did arrive in time for...

Waz's Defense! Matt's BFF here is a grad student in my program, who will now be known to all of us a Doc Zonk. Well, me at least. He gave a great seminar, was articulate and poised with his committee, and now has finished his career as a grad student. We were really excited to celebrate with him and his family, but I'll admit I'm feeling a bit melancholy knowing this is just once step closer to the impending move to Virginia.

That pretty well settles the running score. It is officially sticky summer here, so we are camped out inside next to the AC for a few months. Matt just heroically swapped out a pinch flat on the car (lucky a few blocks from home), while I cooked some eggs that I am hoping pass for dinner. After two solid weeks out of the house, I've got some catch up work to do on the homemaking front. I think I'll start with laundry...

Some pictures, et. al.

Hi, all,

I finally managed to get the pictures off the camera and up on the internet for the sisters visiting for the weekend. You can check that out at this link.

The visit was a pretty rousing success. We went out for BBQ multiple times, with delicious results. We took kelsey out to Salt Lick, which was fantastic, and then all the Preecs siblings went out to Rudy’s later, which is also really, really, really good. We went down to South Congress, full of strange and fun local shops and bought a lot of candy and browsed a boatload of antiques and strange things at ‘Uncommon Objects’, a neat store. I spent most of my purchases at the local candy store. Smarties, Sweet Tarts, and Lemonheads, in case you were curious. The Alamo Drafthouse showed a Master Pancake Theater production of The Fellowship of the Rings, which was hilarious. For those of you that have never seen one before, a few people sit up front and tell jokes throughout the whole movie. It ranges from really funny to injuriously hilarious. (Score-amir!) Raucus laughter was enjoyed by all.

From Sister Visit & Hike

We also did some clothes shopping and played a lot of rock band. We’re a pretty musical family. Best singing award goes to Matt, best inability to determine up from down goes to Sandlin, best country music purchase goes to Kelsey, and sweatiest drummer award goes to me. Jessie gets the most lefty-righty flips award, and a lifetime achievement award for playing rock band with pretty much everyone that has ever spent the night at our house.

From Sister Visit & Hike

There’s some other pictures in there from this weekend, too. Jess had an ‘outdoor’ itch, and so we moseyed off to do some hiking this weekend. It was actually a really good day for it, a little overcast in the morning, and not too hot when the sun broke through. It was 7.5 miles overall, which is right about at the limit of our hiking ability, it seems. And we also get a bonus half-mile for hiking to the river afterwords and taking a cooling, refreshing dip. Good times.

From Sister Visit & Hike

Oh, and we saw a snake.

From Sister Visit & Hike

Most of the rest of the weekend has been resting. Though there have been some other developments. Just in case anyone hasn’t heard, Peachie, the family cat up in Alaska, was put to sleep this weekend. She was acting very strangely and had gotten down to 5 pounds, a very unhealthy weight. Ultimately, age just was too much for her, and so the parents made the hard choice and let her go. She was 19 years old, which is like a Methuselah cat, and she was an absolute sweetheart, as long as you didn’t care overmuch about the state of your furniture. The world is a slightly less fuzzy place without her in it.

From Sister Visit & Hike

Also, I’ve had to call in professional help, though they haven’t returned my calls yet, because it’s pretty obvious that our sprinkler system is leaking somewhere underground. I don’t want to cast aspersions, but the easternmost fence area in the backyard is pretty much a swamp, and I don’t think that’s traditional for Austin. It gets pretty wet around the west side of the house, too.

A few other bits of Micro-News, I’ve been doing yet more writing, attempting to do at least a page or two every day in an effort to finish my story so I can try and get it published and move onto another hobby: sound. I want to try and do a podcast with the siblings. That would be fun. Jess is off at roller derby, and has another game next week! You can actually watch it over the internet, and if anyone wants to know how, just e-mail me and I’ll let you know the details. My proposed next work-exursion to England has been pushed back to June. A nice time to get away from the blistering Austin sun and go hang out with some Sheep.

With love to all,

-N

Kelsey's First Photo Release...

This is a link to Kelsey's first cut of photos from her trip. Please enjoy...Gordie and Connie

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=chqm4cf.bo206tgz&Uy=oyk4r3&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=33240087075_397000931603&localeid=en_US

Brazil Pictures

Group shot of most of the people I hung out with. First picture taken in Brazil.



















Girls all done up for carnival. I have a sticker of a star on my face.















Girls at the futbol game. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a few cheers in Portugues. I'm not sure what they mean though....







Traditional Afrobrazilian dance. I got to see a lot of capoera as well.

Puerto Rico Pictures

So I know everybody wants to see pictures, and I'm not really sure how to do this very well on a blog, so i guess I'll do a couple posts with a few pictures...and I'm sure I'll recieve notes that tell me that there's an easier way to do it...but I wouldn't know.



This is a waterfall we hiked to in Puerto Rico. After this I went swimming, and yes, it was cold.



















Scenic things on the way to the waterfall....like more waterfalls....











Paul, me and Codi in Puerto Rico. The first people I met on SAS.