Apparently I didn't need to ask.
The donor evaluation extravaganza has officially commenced. With donor urine collection. Seriously. What kind of friend does it take to do that?
The in person poking and prodding sessions have been moved until the end of August. I continue to display patience and flexibility in the face of ever changing time frames and delays. Ok I don't. That's a lie.
Whatever. I can't be bothered with analyzing and restructuring their entire scheduling process, though I'm sure it would take about 7 minutes. And so we wait.
Erik is doing great with the dialysis. My biggest anxiety producing situation at the moment is that I don't have a family vacation planned. I'm sure kidney failure trumps my need to always have some future adventure to look forward to knowing that the polar vortex will be making a reappearance in 4 short months, but I'm just keeping it real people. I need to plan a vacation.
This weekend we had a travel test run with the dialysis on the go option. We travelled to CT for my friend Leslie's fabulous wedding. In light of the amount of medical equipment that we had to bring with us we opted to drive. 8 hours. And when I say "we" please know that I didn't do anything remotely resembling driving. I read, updated Facebook, played some ridiculous game on my phone that Jack taught me, had some work phone calls, commented on the driving skills of others, and did my best to hold out on potty breaks for fear that if we stopped Erik might ask me to drive. Let me tell you what, about halfway through somewhere in the middle of nowheresville PA I was wishing for that donor testing pee collection jar.
The bellman at the hotel looked at us like we were definitely going to turn our hotel room into a meth lab as we piled all of the Baxter medical boxes onto his little dolly carrier thing.
We only had one near trauma. Well, I wasn't even in the room when tragedy struck because why would I be able to sleep in while in a nice hotel with no puppy and no children. I was off wandering the streets of New Haven before people were even up for work with Starbuck's in hand and nobody talking to me. Nirvana.
Erik forgot some tube cap things that are supposed to be changed every day because they keep the open access sterile, but like the McGyver that he is he fashioned a little makeshift clamp thingy after calling the front desk for scissors to cut some tube. Clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about. Basically he forgot something, had a momentary freak out, and came up with a hopefully sterile solution. I didn't hear about it until I was well into wedding festivity prep and admittedly didn't really pay attention. When Erik finally said "but I think it's just fine" I was all "oh that's great, I'm glad you figured that out" like I knew what he just explained to me while I was in the midst of my internal analysis of flat iron v. curling wand.
So now we know we can travel with dialysis. Not my first option but it can be done.
We had a great weekend with old friends. We celebrated our 24th anniversary. And I didn't have to drive home at all either. Success.
***Title of this post brought to you by my life long love of the Free to Be You and Me album.
***The donor testing process should be complete at the end of August. I have no idea how long they spend analyzing the situation and deciding how long to delay before calling us back. We actually get all of our information from the potential donor…such an impersonal title and one day soon we will have a blog post celebrating this wonderful person…as the entire process is confidential. Erik has not yet been told by Cleveland Clinic that he has a potential donor out there. Totally understand that policy. I wonder what they would think if they knew I was posting pictures of urine collection containers. Again, we are all thankful that I don't have to pass the psychological testing portion of these games.
***Unless someone annoys me or I observe something that can't go without comment, the next update will probably be after the testing is complete. Until then I am researching vacation destinations.
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