A Mixed Blessing

Jonathan's been waiting for this day (his staple & stent removal day) for 18 days now, but it didn't turn out to be quite the happy day either of us was hoping for.  We left yesterday afternoon for Gainesville since Jonathan had his first appointment at 6:30 this morning, so it meant more driving and another night in a hotel.  

The blessings of this trip were that the kids got to spend a great night & day with Grandma and Papa at their house, since they stayed behind.  They were very good we are told and had tons of fun playing outside with Grandma and in with Papa.  Another blessing of this trip was that we were able to meet up with our friend Kacy, who had some important stuff for Jonathan.  Additionally, we got a pretty relaxing evening away from the kids.  Just to have a single meal without the kids is a blessing.  (If you have small kids, you know what I'm talking about.)  However, both of us are suffering from terrible insomnia, so we didn't get a lot of rest.  

So he had 3 appointments to endure today, and during the 2nd one (at the transplant clinic) we learned it was still a little early to pull all of Jonathan's staples.  He was disappointed in this news, since they become more irritating everyday.  They ended up pulling out every other one, which was a step in the right direction, but not the final outcome he was hoping for.  So after asking a lot of questions, seeing a second doctor, and getting some staples pulled, we were late for his urology appointment across the hall.  So we get over there, and after some more waiting he's called back.  They do the normal vitals and all that, and then there's more waiting.  Finally, the doctor comes in and says that he doesn't remove stents until 4-6 weeks after surgery.  He could do it today, but with Jonathan's creatinine still in the 2's, he says it's better to wait since they need to see if the kidneys need more time to grow and work (to bring the #'s down) or if there is a blockage, which is keeping the creatinine up.  It's most likely that the kidneys need more time, which is certainly understandable.   Plus, it's worse to pull them out too soon and then have to put them back later, if necessary.  You wouldn't believe that Jonathan underwent major surgery not even 3 weeks ago to look at him, so it's easy to forget that everything still needs time to adjust.  And since the kidneys are small, they're used to working in a body which had a lot less weight than Jon's so, they still need a little more time to get used to their new home.  I'm not sure who the doctor was that gave us his discharge orders and scheduled all of this stuff too soon, but I hope she doesn't do this to everybody else!  

So, all of that and we basically just prolonged the inevitable and drove 4 hours to do it!  It was a little frustrating, since we could have just done all of this at his doctor's locally, but what can you do?  We'll go back in a month, on Abbey's birthday actually, to do it all over again.

Jonathan's levels are good, but we have to watch his sugar and get him exercising.  Unfortunately, there is a possibility, because of the medicines, that he may become diabetic after all of this, so we're going to do everything we can to prevent that from happening.