The last visit to the hospital

I spent the day in the hospital again yesterday. This time Holly and I brought our parent's along too.

The day was mainly to talk to people and answer any questions we had about what was going to happen. Although, it started off with me having an echocardiogram which is an ECG thing where they do an ultrasound of my heart at the same time. It was really cool to see my heart working away on the screen and interesting to see how it works with the valves working and everything.

After that we met the surgeon who will be performing the surgery. He was really nice to talk to and explained a load of stuff to us about what was going to happen before, during and after the surgery. He told me that they will be taking my left kidney as the left one has longer blood vessels which makes it easier to attach to the recipient and he showed me where the incision will be made on my body (about a 4-5 cm incision on the left side of my body just under my ribs).

We spoke to a consultant who spoke to us about follow up arrangements and medication etc... which, for me, doesn't require too much. Just some pain killers for a few days following the surgery.

Finally we spoke to the independent assessor who will decide if I am trying to sell my kidney and whether or not I actually know Holly. We were all kind of nervous about this but we brought along photographs and letters from friends etc... and she told us it would be more than enough. She spoke to me and Holly individually and asked me how I had made the decision to go through with this. She also told me that I had up until the start of the anaesthetic to decide not to go ahead with it.

It was good taking my Dad and Holly's Mum along with us as they hadn't really got involved up to now and had loads of questions to ask.

Now I'm just waiting for a response from the legal side of things and that will be the final 'yes' or 'no' to decide whether or not it all goes ahead!!

The date is set now for the 17th October and I have some vials ready for some blood tests to be sent to the hospital on the 6th for the final cross match.

Once I know that it's going to go ahead I have a feeling that time is going to pass very quickly up to the date of the operation. I can't wait for it now (which seems really odd) as it's going to be a very strange/cool/unique/exciting experience I think.