One of my toughest challenges was to decide to or not to accept Rajesh's kidney. I had agreed to his getting tested since I knew that with the way the medical system worked it would be a lengthy process. Rajesh was simply an option when I first contacted UW for listing. It was like a standby. There were a number of reasons for this.
1. I had no idea of the impact of life with one functioning kidney. Rajesh had a family with a young daughter. Would he be able to run etc..
2. What if the remaining kidney starts to fail on Rajesh. We don't want to have two CKD patients in the family.
3. I had a good chance of getting a kidney at UW quickly once I was on the list
Then I read through the paper that Rajesh had sent me a link to a paper on the effect of running a marathon on numerous blood test lab parameters. I was particularly interested in the Creatinine, BUN, Ca, Na, P values which are impacted in CKD. The change post-marathon was minimal. Plus I also had saved off Rajesh's test results pre- and post a long run and did not notice a difference in the values. Rajesh had done a lot of research before going down this path. He had started to blog this findings. I reviewed some on my own also. I was a little more convinced that he would be ok as a kidney donor.
Meanwhile, Rajesh got approved as a donor at RUSH provided he got his TB treated. Here again, there were differences as to the terms of treatment. RUSH required all 12 doses to be completed and UW said a minimum of 4 doses.
Once I was convinced that Rajesh would be the donor it was time to compare 'apples to apples' between the 2 centers and choose. I was back to the CIGNA Case Manager for some resource and approvals.
1. I had no idea of the impact of life with one functioning kidney. Rajesh had a family with a young daughter. Would he be able to run etc..
2. What if the remaining kidney starts to fail on Rajesh. We don't want to have two CKD patients in the family.
3. I had a good chance of getting a kidney at UW quickly once I was on the list
Then I read through the paper that Rajesh had sent me a link to a paper on the effect of running a marathon on numerous blood test lab parameters. I was particularly interested in the Creatinine, BUN, Ca, Na, P values which are impacted in CKD. The change post-marathon was minimal. Plus I also had saved off Rajesh's test results pre- and post a long run and did not notice a difference in the values. Rajesh had done a lot of research before going down this path. He had started to blog this findings. I reviewed some on my own also. I was a little more convinced that he would be ok as a kidney donor.
Meanwhile, Rajesh got approved as a donor at RUSH provided he got his TB treated. Here again, there were differences as to the terms of treatment. RUSH required all 12 doses to be completed and UW said a minimum of 4 doses.
Once I was convinced that Rajesh would be the donor it was time to compare 'apples to apples' between the 2 centers and choose. I was back to the CIGNA Case Manager for some resource and approvals.
No comments:
Post a Comment