Waking up in ICU

It seemed like only seconds later that I was being awakened by nurses and doctors. I was cold, and kept asking for blankets. Eventually they had to pile on 8 blankets straight out of the warming oven. Even so, my body temperature was not high enough to register on the thermometer, either orally or in my underarm. One of the nurses then took a warm blanket and rolled it into a cylinder, which she positioned around my head and shoulders. Ramiro said I looked like an Eskimo baby. However, that seemed to do the trick, and I began to feel warmer. I think they deliberately cool you down during surgery in order to minimize blood loss. However, I am so anemic that I don't warm up easily. As I roused out of the anesthesia, I became aware of three things besides the cold. First, Ramiro was allowed to stay with me, even though I was in ICU. Secondly, I could definitely feel the bloated condition of my legs and belly. Third, the formerly present bad breath was gone. I tried breathing deeply, breathing through my mouth, breathing through my nose, breathing into my hand, but no bad breath. The bad breath had developed about a year ago. At first it was intermittent, but later became a constant. It is called uremic breath, and stems from the uremia, the high concentration of urea waste products in the blood stream. The body can't push the waste products out in the urine when the kidneys are damaged, so the body sends the waste products out through the breath, the skin, and through vomiting/nausea. It's hard to describe the bad breath, but the closest would be soething ike the taste of old blood, like when you have a tooth exracted and the tooth cavity develops a large blood clot that you have to leave in place until it slowly decomposes. It's hard to find food appetizing when you have the taste of old blood in your mouth constatly. Occasionally I had the generalized skin itchiness that signaled that I was excreting through the skin, but that was not constant yet. I remembered that uremic breath and the skin itchiness were two of my dad's symptoms before he was diagnosed, so that tells me how sick he was before his condition was fully assessed. At times I had frequent nausea, but that had become less frequent in the last month or so. Mostly the nausea and bad breath would be very pronounced when I ate any kind of protein. To avoid getting sick, I mostly stuck to a carb and vegan diet--bread, pasta, veggies, fruit, and only occasionally a piece of cheese, or some yogurt or a boiled egg. Tuna salad was a real treat, but the portion had to be small. I estimate that I was eating less than 3 oz of protein a day, and most days only an ounce a day. By evening, I was pretty well out of the anesthesia, and felt alert and awake. I periodically checked my breath, but it remained sweet. The bloating was very uncomfortable. My skin was so tight I could not bend my knees. I looked at my feet and they looked wide and full and my ankles were absent, they were the same size as my feet. My friend Debbie called Ramiro, who gave her a progress report, then surprised her by saying, "here, I'll let you talk to her." My sister called as well, but I don't much remember about either conversation. I made Ramiro go home about 9 p.m. He is now staying with my friend Mary Margaret Stubblefield, a childhood friend from first grade. She was gracious enough to open her home to him, and I know that he'll appreciate being in a more home like environment instead of a hotel where he'd be all by himself. I worry about him driving out to a unknown location in a town he's not familiar with, but he promised to call when he gets there, and it's not long before he does. I tried to sleep, and would have except for the nurses coming in practically every hour to check on something--vital signs, the level of urine in the Foley box, check the bags of IV fluids, meds, and of course to draw blood. So ends the first day with my new kidney.