Day eight

Dear Friends,
As I walked into the hospital this morning for plasmapheresis, I announced to Mom that I am officially tired of this whole process. It's only a few more days, but I'm ready for it to be over with. The good news is that I think I will be able to have dialysis early on Saturday morning so that driving home to Blacksburg will be feasible.

IVIG

A bit of technical information: the main indicator of my immune system's readiness to accept Molly's kidney is a test result known as an A2 titer. It is a measure of the reaction of my immune system to her blood type in the form of antibodies. Last November (or whenever she was first tested for a possible match), the titer was 16, a really good number. The immunologist wants it to be 8 or lower before the transplant. Unfortunately, when I got the infection, it soared to 256. So we had to wait. (I was originally scheduled for the transplant on April 10th)  By the end of May, it had dropped to 128 on its own (just by my getting well) and the plasmapheresis is supposed to take it the rest of the way. The IVIG is to trick my body into not making more antibodies. The test is tomorrow and assuming it looks good, everything will be on track. Anyway, cross your fingers.

Alan Esker and Candace Wall are supposed to visit this afternoon and Mom and I are having dinner with Dean and Lisa Harman so there will be plenty of distraction today. I am feeling fine, as if nothing is happening at all with the treatments.

There was an interesting article in the NYT the other day about kidney disease (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/kidney-disease-an-underestimated-killer/) and the cost. My guess is that this transplant is going to cost about $100K, but that dialysis was costing about $50K/year. So from a financial standpoint, transplant is far preferred. Of course, quality of life issues are huge too.