Monday, August 13 was the 3 month anniversary of my transplant! Ramiro and I traveled to Dallas on Saturday, Aug. 11 and spent the night at the Country Inn and Suites, where we had been staying the day that I got the transplant call. Strangely enough, we even got the same room! Ramiro said that if my phone rang at 9:30 in the morning (the time I got the call), for me not to answer it, because it could be Baylor again, asking for its "loaner kidney" back!
Sunday we had breakfast at Mimi's Cafe with Connie and Guero, then we drove to Ft. Worth and checked into the ___, which is where Jr. stayed when he visited us back in May. For dinner we got take out from Central Market.
Monday morning we went early to the transplant clinic for a routine visit--blood work and urinalysis. The results look great all around, and only minor changes were made to my meds. Blood pressure meds (amlodipene and carvedilol) were reduced! All other drugs stayed the same.
For lunch we went to Terra, the Mediterranean buffet; I tried to eat lightly (per instructions for GloFil test), but I still ate more than I should.
Monday afternoon I went to the Dallas Nephrology Associates (DNA) office (partners are Dr. Fishbach, Dr. Yango, and Dr. Levy) for a Glo-Fil test. This is a test to calculate glomerular filtration rate using a radioactive iodine compound. You check in and give a urine specimen; the tech then calculates the specific gravity of the pee, which tells the tech how hydrated the patient is. We had been told to drink at least 10 -12 glasses of water a day for the 3 days preceding the test. I'd been doing it!
There were three patients getting the test, me, a white guy and a black guy. After the Spec. Grav. test, the white guy and I were told to drink 4 glasses of water in the next 40 min. The black guy was given the chance to opt out of the test because he would have to drink 12 glasses of water in 40 min., apparently he was not hydrated well enough. He decided to go forward and started chugging water.
Some time after the 40 min. were up, the tech took blood samples, and then we were allowed to urinate and told to catch all of it. I peed into a "hat" set into the commode; the guys got some tall containers. The water drinking (1 glass thereafter for me, 2 for the white guy and 4 for the black guy), peeing and blood sampling were repeated 3 more times. The test lasted until 4 p.m.; we'd been there since 1 p.m.
The info about the test suggested that you might not feel too good afterwards because of all the water you'd have to drink, but I didn't have any side effects, other than having to pee frequently for the next few hours. We went to Joe T. Garcia's for dinner and both of us got fajitas, which we mostly brought home because the portions are huge.
We didn't start the drive back to Arkansas until Tuesday, so that we could get an early start. It was a good trip, although Texas was extremely hot. The weather was a little cooler back in Arkansas, and the coming week is supposed to get some really cool weather. We'll see.
