Home sweet home with a brand-new kidney!

A HUGE THANK-YOU FOR ALL YOUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS. Sarah and I are eternally grateful.

Dr Stalin Campos kindly asked one of the residents to take this photo of Sarah and me right after we came out of surgery at Einstein Medical Center in Philly.

My great boyfriend Scotty

The gift of life and love my daughter Sarah gave me is a miracle of both her incredible loving personality and a miracle of medicine.

Although we didn't know it at the time, recovery is more difficult for the Donor during this nephrectomy. She felt truly awful the first day w/ nausea and vomitting, not uncommon at all, but ralleyed remarkably on day two, and was discharged on Day Three! She is on a small dose of Percosets.

For drug aficiondos out there, scuse me I'm too tired to look up the spelling, Percoset is an opiate mixed w/ Tylenol, while Percodan is opiate mixed w/ aspirin.

She and Ethan are staying in a bed n breakfast in Philly since she has a couple of appts at Einstein in the next couple weeks.

The care we received was superb. The food so vile we brought it in from home.

In retrospect, the whole operation was a breeze. In reality, from my point of view, it was a real ordeal filled with pain, massive discomfort - I had tubes coming out of my inner jugular vein, left hand, a drain on my belly, an incision on my belly - a blood pressure cuff that puffed like a dragon every hour - absolutely sleepless nights spent writhing in pain from my sciatica!

Every precaution is taken to avoide complications. At nite, my legs were wrapped in thick pulsing 'stockings' to prevent blood clots. A shot of heparin in given in the belly. Blood sugar is monitored b/c prednisone causes an increase in glucose in the bloodstream.

And oh the pills I now take! A total of 14 which will be decreased slowly down to perhaps five.

First order of biz when I got home was to load my pillbox.

My antirejection meds are Cellcept, Prograf and Prednisone. Some transplant centers don't use Prednisone which is harmful to the body but then there are supplements I'm prescribed to take c/o that.

Oh no! It's nearly 8 pm. Scuse me while I take my evening pills. Be right back.

Gag! But they all went down.

For dinner, I'll heat up mom's peasoup (formerly forbidden) and have a chicken salad sandwich on a whole wheat roll (whole grains formerly forbidden).

I can eat everything now except grapefruit,which interferes w/pill absorption and sushi, which has too much bacteria. I'm more prone to infections on the immunosuppressants.

So I was there

Friday
Saturday
Sunday
and came home Monday, today

The docs and nurses said they never saw anyone make as good a recovery as me.

I asked Dr Stalin Campos what my blood vessels looked like when he went inside. They were beautiful, he said, as he sat on a red tub in the room. He knocked on a nearby door and said some people's vessels are hard b/c they eat too many cheeseburgers!

He and I had a beautiful talk and he'll help me and Sarah write the book we're planning about the operation.

Altho he no longer performs them, when he transplanted kidneys into infants he said their bodies absorbed them easily, the younger you are the better.

From El Salvador, he speaks English beautifully but really finds it difficult, much preferring his native tongue. He left his country during their Revolution, slipping into Mexico many times, always afraid, with his family members, and traveling to NY where he had relatives.

Received his medical degree in El Sal b/c it was cheaper. When he was eight he decided to become a physician b/c his mother was a nurse who helped people for free, performing duties similar to a surgeon, esp. after the coming of the Revolution.

His five year-old dtr Christina wants to be a surgeon. 22-year-old Johanna is in med school in Tampa studying to be an oncologist.

He is loved by the whole staff.

I hadn't looked at my incision which is several inches long above my groin. He wanted me to see it so he borrowed a mirror from nurse Davinia.

They measure my urine output. I pee into a 'hat' placed on the toilet seat. They were impressed by the quantity of it and the color. Previously my urine had good quantity but poor quality. In other words, I was not excreting all the toxins and they were building up in my bloodstream.

For lunch I made a delicious omelet (gotta thoroughly cook the eggs now) and my sister Ellen brought me some Alpine Lace cheese, so I made my beloved cheese omelet. Cheese was strictly forbidden before Odysseus became a part of me as it contains phosphorus. I also had milk at the hospital which tasted yummy. Dairy foods contain phosphorus.

Sarah and I are in touch everyday. I love hearing her musical voice. I believe they have a piano in their bed n breakfast so Ethan will be able to practice a bit.

Scott was absolutely wonderful and visited every morning after coming home from work. He drove me home. What a feeling of freedom it was driving out of that hospital. The magnolias and forsythia are in bloom.

Niece Melissa and husband Rich who drove down from - horrors! - Amityville, NY - to visit us.

My son Dan brought fortifications including great reading material. I read this month's Vanity Fair and particularly enjoyed excerpts from a new book about Goldman-Sachs including the power struggle bet Hank Paulsen and Jon Corzine. Who knew? Who cares?

I always ask Dan, What's the latest thing his 8-mo daughter Grace if doing.

Here's my b'ful nurse "Funso" orig. from Nigeria. Hopefully if we click on the photo we can read her real name. What does she do on her days off? Changes diapers of her two little kids.

The Lady in Red. What a surprise when Helen Kirschner came to visit. Husband Larry was working on lighting for the play Once Upon a Mattress at Chestnut Hill College.

Ah, here's my b'ful sister Lynn. She ran our family's Now and Then Shop after Dad died.

Memories

Stalin thot Lynn's boyfriend Neal looks like Chuck Norris.

Ah, here's Stalin now. The man of the hour. Of the decade. 41 yrs old. They vacation at a place in FL where his daughter can ride with the dolphins. The place also serves as a resort for people with muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease.

The things that sustained me. Icing on the Cake is the poetry journal our writer's group just published. The all-important cellphone. Postcards I sent to about 30 people.

Gotta run. Take nothing for granted and enjoy every moment.