Hello all, 

Yes, it really happened. It is not a dream! 

After three years and three days of waiting, of being on-call 24/7/365 with two false alarms, the third time was the charm.

Hubby Carol received a kidney transplant overnight Wed, August 28th at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. We received “the call” earlier that day that there was a match and to get to Mayo Clinic FAST. We had less than one hour to provide them with a flight number and exact arrival time.

A crazy, whirlwind day of travel, including a delay on our non-stop flight because of weather. Wouldn’t you know, on THIS flight! Carol was whisked directly from the parking lot at Mayo’s E.R. straight to Pre-op, where at one point, there were nine medical folks doing nine different routine pre-op tasks all at once. With our flight delay, timing had now become extremely critical!

Carol is doing very well, in fact excellent, and his transplant team is quite pleased. He was discharged after only 2.5 days. Isn’t modern medicine amazing, 2.5 days? So far, he and his new kidney are very happy and comfy together. 

We will need to remain in Phoenix for six weeks undergoing every-other-day labs, tests, doctor consults, transplant team appointments, in addition to the daily testing, readings, monitoring that we must do ourselves. Lots of record keeping. It’s been 106-109 degrees every day, but this ain’t no Arizona vacation😀 !!

We look forward to resuming our lives, although this new chapter comes with its own new challenges as well. But no more 3x/week, all-day trips to Carson City for dialysis. Carol”s life had depended upon equipment on the other side of the mountain. It’s been a long three years.

‘My office’ at Costco will be closing now, and customers will just have to make their own decisions on furniture and other items without me 😊. Honestly, I really will miss the friends I’ve made in the retail world down there.

Carol and I are very happy, very grateful, relieved, overwhelmed, emotional, exhausted. But we are ever so thankful to the donor and his or her grieving family for giving us the gift of life through organ donation. We will forever hold them in our hearts.

Hope to see everyone again soon. This really is incredible! 

pato

PS:  Looks like the number 3 is our new lucky number ❤.   The words below have always been very special to us. They come from the national organ registry.