Today is Lonnie's birthday! He and Ginger stopped in to see me at my office after he got some blood drawn today. I gave him a 5x7 framed photo of the picture we had taken together that you can see at the top of this blog. I was sure to tell him that I just knew he wanted a framed photo of me displayed in his house :-) It continues to amaze me how well he is doing overall. He just hangs in there -- even though I know the dialysis and all of the doctor's visits can be incredibly overwhelming! So Lonnie -- hold tight and keep the faith. Your real birthday present is yet to come!!
Next Wednesday, December 22nd, Mike and I are scheduled to spend the entire day at UW Hospital. Starting at 7:00 a.m. I will be poked and prodded, scanned and surveyed, and hopefully given the A-OK to enter the paired donation database. Chris called me Friday and explained to me that because this program is a whole new venture for UW(and all of the other transplant centers), they are planning to start by placing one donor/recipient pair into the system. They are just days away from doing that. As soon as they know that they understand the system and all the kinks are ironed out, they will "dump" all of the other pairs they have ready into the system. She told me that they want to get Lonnie and I in as soon as possible. Once we are in the system we just wait and see what happens. Once every 4 weeks the computer runs the program nationwide and searches for possible matches. If we get a match they will let us know and we can complete the steps necessary to make the transplants happen! It is so exciting to be a part of this brand new program. The estimate is for an additional 2,000 to 3,000 kidney transplants to be completed nationwide EVERY year once this is up and running! That is just incredible!!
So, stay tuned. It is our hope that the best is truly yet to come!!
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