Its all coming together! Many Thanks...

These last few weeks have been stressful to say the least. There have been so many details to get sorted out as I near my last day of work (tomorrow), as we prepare to fly to the city of surgery (November 21st) and have my Father-in-law come stay with us for a week to help take care of me. Add getting a Physical done to the mix and its safe to say I have been busy.

Up until late this morning we still hadn't had any confirmation that we were going to be able to fly with Hope Air. Then that fateful call came and the news could not be better. My husband and I are flying out this Sunday and have our return flights all booked (assuming recovery goes smoothly). I am grateful to the social worker for all of her time and effort in arranging this, and to Hope Air for the wonderful service they provide.

Work. Its been crazy busy. I have had a temp in the office for the last three days that I have been training as she will be covering me for the 8 weeks I am off. She's wonderful, really is. Smart, and able to think and use common sense to make sure things run smoothly. Its been a bit of a challenge as being the only full time employee means that my job has a lot of components and we only have 3 days of training. I think she might be a little overwhelmed, but I do have 2 days before surgery next week when she will be on her own and able to reach me with any questions that she has. Of course this also means that I have a lot of tasks that I can't hand off as they need my special touch and need to get done before I leave tomorrow. My desk needs to be totally cleaned off and organized (a much larger task than the simple sentence may lead you to believe it is) and the list of tasks to do seems to be growing the more I go through my stacks of paper. I think its safe to say that I will be working late tonight.

Which doesn't leave a lot of time for getting my home in the condition I want to leave it in. I am normally a fairly tidy person, but when we have guests I like to make sure the place is spotless. I typically would do this a day or so before the guest arrives to ensure that I don't undo all of my hard work. The plan was to do a good section of the deep scrubbing tonight but both my hubby and I are working late. This in itself is not too much of an issue, but it does mean that the remainder of our weekend will be spent cleaning instead of enjoying the mobility that might take me a while to regain post-op.

As I mentioned, this is something that we would normally do our best to get started on much sooner, especially with areas that we don't interact with on a daily basis (ie the guest room); however as the best laid plans often do, this went by the wayside. I was contacted by the hospital where the surgery will be and told I needed a full physical and family history. Great. I called my doctor's office. They are booking into December and there was no way they could squeeze in a full physical. Which meant I needed to find a walk-in clinic that would do one. Again, not an easy task at all. I received the call Tuesday around 3pm basically saying if I didn't have a physical I wasn't going to have surgery. So despite a slightly busy work week I pretty much dropped everything that I was doing and started making calls. I was fortunate enough to find a clinic that does physicals on walk-in, and away I went. It apparently has been longer than I thought since I had my last physical as I didn't know they made you strip. Ya... down the just undergarments, and even then, only on the bottom. I wasn't exactly anticipating this and thus when the doctor gave the instructions to strip and sit on the bed thingy I was in a touch of shock. If I'm going to have to get naked, I prefer a bit more notice. Anyways, made it through, got the paperwork and thus ended what I thought was going to be a quiet night packing and cleaning.

One of the good things that happened this week was my mom sent me a surgery care package. Since she can't be there with us, and works during the week she wanted to do something to let me know that she was thinking of me. She sent 2 pairs of slippers (1 for the hospital - as I was advised to throw them out when I leave due to the germs they will have picked up) and another for recovery at home as I am prone to cold feet. There were yoga pants (2) and sweat pants, both with very loose waistbands that can be tightened with drawstrings as opposed to elastics as I have been advised that I will be tender after surgery and will struggle with waistbands. She also sent PJs for the hospital (these will be laundered thoroughly instead of discarded post-op) with a great waistband. My mom loves me very much and this was very, very much appreciated. In fact, its going to be 90% of what I pack for the trip as its pretty much everything I need, clothing-wise that is.

I'm busy, and a touch stressed (I haven't been sleeping the last 4 nights) but not worried about surgery. My husband and my mother take care of that for me, and a lot of the stress has been alleviated today with the confirmation of Hope Air flights.

And I know that I am making a bigger deal out of cleaning my place to within an inch of its life, but it really doesn't take that long and being the lovely procrastinator that I am, I have a feeling that even if I didn't have an impromptu physical or a late night of work that it would still get done this weekend.

The good news is its all coming together. My temp has done wonderful during training and knows where to go for help if she needs it, the tasks I have left to do before I go will not take me as much time as I think they will (as soon as I get my procrastination out of the way and just focus), my mom's wonderful care package took the packing stress away as I now have everything I need, and we have our flights. We have a place to stay with a good friend of mine who, in a more generous gesture than I could have dreamed about has also offered up a vehicle to use while in town, and family to help take care of me when my husband has to go back to work. I'm very lucky that this is all coming together so beautifully and I don't need to stress about anything anymore. Maybe, if I get enough done today, I will even be able to sleep tonight. Now that would be a real treat.

My own hesitancy

All the way through this process I have been blogging about tests, doctor's appointments, and random thoughts within about 24hrs of the event, or the event that triggered the thought process. Yet at the biggest moment in the process thus far I hesitated to blog about it. Yes, I've been busy with work (its our busiest time of year) but the same way I always seem to find time to email my best friend, I know that it would be easy for me to find time to update here.

So why the wait? Why has it been over a week since I got the call before saying anythings? To clarify that just a touch, I got the call, my boss knew right away as she was in the car beside me, and I promptly called my hubby to share the news (left a voicemail), and texted my best friend. I called my mom within a few hours as I knew it would be a bit more of a conversation with her instead of "Hi, got approved for surgery, very excited! chat more later, love you, bye!" and I wanted to make sure I had that time.

But why didn't I blog about it? What was stopping me? In all honesty I don't know. I've thought about it, it being both 'I should post' and 'why haven't I posted about this yet', and I've got nothing. Although I do think I am making up for the lack of posts in as this is my third of the night. As for the time delay, the best I can come up with is I wasn't sure how I was going to share the news with the 'world' and needed to let my back-brain sort things out (back-brain is my subconscious, I often put problems there that I can't consciously figure out a solution to, and when my subconscious has figured it out, I become aware of the solution). After all that time and subconscious activity I would have thought my announcement would have been accompanied by a bit more fanfare, however I am just not that good at coding and didn't know how to make fireworks go off when you got to my blog. That and they would be almost like a pop-up ad which I despise more than anything. So no fanfare, just a simple announcement that has now been buried under 2 additional posts. Meh.

Thankfully, blogging is the only thing I have had some hesitancy about in this whole process. Yes, I do think twice about what I am doing, but do I ever doubt my decision? No. Not for a moment. I was on the phone with my mother last night and we were chatting about this, and again babies came up. Her thoughts are I shouldn't do anything that could potentially harm my *eventual* babies, that they deserved every opportunity I could give them. I countered with 'the recipient is some one's baby. They have a mother and a father and a family too. Don't they deserve the opportunity to live?' Her only comment to this was that I was her baby.

This goes back to my thought process: Just because I don't know someone doesn't mean their life is worth any less than mine. My kidney is not going to a dump, to someplace where it will be wasted and any potential health risks will have been in vain. My kidney is going to give someone another chance at life. Therefor, any and all risks are worth it.

So here's a question to you: what are your views on the value of life? on human nature? Do you believe that all people are inherently good? Or all are inherently bad and have to be taught to be good? Nature vs nurture?

Switching Sides

I was in the car with my boss running errands when the call came through. I was over the moon, doing a happy dance in my seat (she was driving) and she... took a deep breath. She told me that through all of this she had played devil's advocate trying to make sure I knew what I was doing (and I'm sure trying to convince me not to go through with it) but now that its been confirmed, she is switching sides.

Switching sides means that she has said her piece, and now will be there to support me wholeheartedly. She will be there for me, not just as my boss, but as a friend. I feel so blessed. I truly do. Donation is very important to me, and knowing that I have support and am not going to have to continually defend my decision makes it easier for me. It was going to happen one way or another, but its nice to know that the people I know and love are behind me instead of fighting me.

So to you, my wonderful boss, I thank you for your support.

And to any readers out there, what are your thoughts? What type of support have you encountered? How does it influence your decision? Would love to hear what its like for you...

Telling the Other Mother

My husband and I decided that we were far enough along in the process that we should start telling a few people what I was planning. Out of respect for my mother, we decided to tell her first. Which we did.

But now to tell my husband's mother. I love her so dearly, I am very blessed to have such a wonderful relationship with her, and all of my in-laws for that matter. They have really made me a part of the family, and I enjoy a relationship with my mother-in-law outside of interactions with her and my husband.

Yet despite how wonderful the relationship is, I am still nervous about telling her. I get nervous when telling anyone about this. 1, because I am not overly confident that some of the people will be able to keep this to themselves (I'm fairly certain one person I told did not), and 2, because there is still the chance that I will not be able to complete the donation and then I will have to share that news as well. I suppose the 3rd reason is that I am not sure how to deal with this in the instance where I get a negative response.

For whatever reason, I feel as though I would be a failure if I am unable to donate. I am struggling to explain why I would feel that way, so instead of doing a poor job describing it and/or analyzing it, I'm just going to let it be.

The good news is, getting back to telling my mother-in-law, is that I think the 'information distribution' instead of the 'sales job' tactic worked well when I told my mother, and think that I will go down that same path this time round. *fingers crossed* that this will go over well, and that both her and my father-in-law will be there to support my husband and I through the rest of this process.

Dear Mom, I'm donating a Kidney

Okay, so that might not be the best way to start the conversation, but I think its going to have to happen. A very wise friend of mine told me that parents (no matter how old the child is) do not like to be told that something is happening, they like to be involved in the process. So by telling my mother before the date is set, and letting her go through the remainder of the process with me, I am more likely to have her support and the relationship will be better long-term. Therefor I have altered my plan of not telling them until the date is set for surgery.
Thats wonderful. That really is. Now how do I do it?

Part of my anxiety about this is I don't want this to overtake the weekend. I would just like to tell her, answer her questions, then move on. I want to see my family and spend time with them, not spend the entire time talking about this. So I'm thinking I might do it on Sunday before we leave, or maybe over dinner and a bottle of wine.

I love my mother so much, and I want her love and support. But, and there is always a but when it comes to family, I don't want her to spread this around. I don't know if I even want my brother to know. The more people that know the more likely this will get out or something, and I prefer to have it be just something I'm doing, then move on with life when it's done. And the more people that know, the harder that will be.

But, I do know that I will have more support post-op and my husband will have some help taking care of me when I am convalescing.
I guess maybe the reason I'm scared to tell her is that I'm scared I will get the "negative support" that I got from my boss and her husband.
The weekend after I tell my mom and dad, we go visit the in-laws and I will be telling them as well. Not overly worried about that just yet, but I think a lot of how I feel about telling them will depend on what happens next weekend when I tell my mom.

The question is: If they hate the idea and are really against it, how will that affect me? And will they be able to support my decision even if they don't agree with it?
Any ideas?