23/20/08 - 6 days post TX - home sweet home

The doctors came round on their usual rounds at 8am and announced that they thought I was well enough to go home. By about 8.15 I was washed, dressed, packed and sitting on the bed ready to go, before they could change their minds.

packed up and ready to go...one of my many bags

After a few meetings with the dietitian and pharmacist Oli and my Dad arrived to collect me and drive home. It felt fantastic to be able to walk through the doors and breathe 'fresh' London air after being cooped up in hospital for over a week.

last photo in my hospital 'apartment'

Fresh air! At last!

Despite the fact that I was ecstatic to be home I was also pretty nervous about being in charge of myself, looking after the wound and getting my head round all the new medicines that I now had to take. I knew how frighteningly important they were to prevent rejection and was terrified of forgetting to take them at the specified time. I also couldn't really get out of bed without the help of the electric sitting up gadget on a hospital bed. So I wasn't really sure how I would cope.

Over the 5 years I had been on dialysis I had grown to understand and know my body extremely well. Every little pain or 'weird' feeling I could diagnose exactly what it was from when my parathyroid gland was playing up to high potassium. Leaving hospital with a whole new organ inside me meant new feelings, aches and pains that I no longer understood. It was pretty scary.

In hospital I had the twice a day blood tests to reassure me that Kasper wasn't going to do a runner that day, at home I had nothing like that. Paranoia fully set in and over the next few days every little strange feeling or ache I had I would panic. What was Kasper trying to tell me now? Is he unhappy? Have I done something to upset him??

I had to learn to relax a bit and not spend every second of the day obsessing over my new body part. Luckily I had plenty to occupy me - many friends came to see how I was doing over the next few days and Oli's family also came to visit, which was lovely.

Anyway despite the Kasper fueled worry, there's no place like home.