This blog will be posted some time after it was written due to an outside directive to not talk about my living donor experience until after I have donated. If you are reading this, it is because I have completed the donation process.
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April 29, 2011Remember the Bill Murray movie where he keeps living the same day over and over again? There was nothing remarkable about that movie but it seems to be modernism for 'deja-vu". Well in terms of tests, today was a bit of a Groundhog day.
About an hour after I left the clinic on after meeting with Dr. S, I got a call from the admin person there. "I'd like to fax you another lab form. Dr. N wants to run a test". "What this time?" I asked, unable to remove the annoyed undertones from my voice despite my best efforts. "CRP" she chirped, cheerfully. For you non doctors out there, CRP is our friend, C-Reactive protein. Um what? Didn't we do that already? I guess Dr. S had indeed talked to Dr. N about why she hadnt left notes on my file. Sigh.
"Didn't we do that already?" I asked. "No we did other stuff but not that.". I knew that the cheerful admin wasn't the one to have this conversation with so I gave her permission to fax the form and proceeded to write an email to the program coordinator.
"Didn't we do this already?" I typed, trying to remain positive and walk the line a bit. I sent the email off and quickly got the reply: "No not that one". She went on to explain that way back in November, my C reactive protein had come back higher than normal. Which I already knew because we've already had that conversation (I even wrote stuff down about it when we did!).
Apparently though despite the conversation, the additional tests two months ago that tapped danced and tested for things that could impact the CRP levels but we didn't actually repeat that test. However if it comes back high again, Dr. N will want more tests. Which again, I thought we did at the end of February. Why else would I know the ins and out of c-reactive protein? I did a blog post about it!
I know this is all in my best interest and they want to make absolutely sure I am healthy which is fine but lets be clear on the tests we are doing! If we weren't looking at CRP in late February what were we looking at? And why couldn't we have looked at it with the other recent tests if it was a concern back in November?
After fighting with my computer to get the lab forms to print, off I went to Foothills this morning (because there is rarely a line more than 2 people) to give one more vial of blood. There were actually 3 people head of me so i did have to wait a little bit but it wasn't a big deal. The technician admired my veins (good thing you can't get an ego about that or mine would be huge by now) and processed to mis-stick me so now, hours later, my right arm resembles that of an IV drug user.
The plus side I did get to overhear two patient companions (one a dad of an older special needs lady and the other a wife of a man with diabetes) talk about kidney transplants and how lucky they were that years later, their loved ones' "borrowed" kidneys were still going strong and there needs to be more living donors. Maybe that was a little reminder to me to suck it up, look past the inefficiency of the testing process and remember this is a good thing I'm doing or at least trying to do.
