Photoessay #2420 - New kidney

My friend in my Inner Circle/Poker group's husband received a new kidney today.  New to him anyway.  He's in his 50s, his kidneys had been failing for quite some time.  The kidney disease was discovered quite accidentally when he was in the ER for something completely different.  He's been fortunate, he's stayed in general good health, still working etc though with some cognitive deficits.

After quite a lot of drug treatment, he started dialysis a year and half ago (?), they did the training to do home dialysis which they have been doing successfully.  This family has few financial resources but always has made do with what they have.  More good fortune, we live in a city that does a lot of organ transplants.  He got on the list.  Several times in the past 1 1/2 years, they've gotten the call, that there's a possibility of a donor kidney available.  My friend always, without fail, points out that almost always, another family is losing their loved one, that the possibility of a kidney has to be balanced against the grief of the other family. 

Sometimes they've just been on alert.  They'll be called back, where they are on the list for this particular organ.  The transplant people do a pretty good job of notifying you of progress.  Sometimes the next call would be to call the whole thing off.  You have to be ready to follow directions and take off to the hospital when they say.  A few times they went to the hospital only to have it called off.  The organ was not in good shape, the other family changed their mind, somebody else got the kidney instead.

This time, though, as she says "we have liftoff!"  They had to wait around the hospital starting on day 3 before things were ready to go.  Surgery went well, high hopes for success! Picture from a nih.gov site, used without permission