27/10/08 - 10 days post tx - 1st clinic and tessio lines

I joined the long queue of people at the post transplant check up clinic at the hospital today. I was bizarrely quite excited about my first appointment - I had spent the weekend literally waiting for something to go wrong and craved the calming words of a Doctor telling me that Kasper was ok, and still happy in his new little home.

After I was shown round the clinic and taught how it works (weight and pulse first, followed by bloods then a trip into the consultant's office) I sat down on a plastic chair amongst all the other patients - some who had transplants days before me, some years before, and then I waited. And waited, and waited and waited a bit more. After about two hours I was finally seen, apparently this kind of waiting time is normal for these clinics. I actually hadn't been to clinic in a couple of years, my dialysis consultant kindly gave me his mobile number and whenever I wanted to see him I would just give him a text and meet him for a chat at dialysis. Pretty handy.

The consultant I saw assured me that everything was still right on track, though he was suprised I still had my tessio in (a line in my chest used for hooking me up to a dialysis machine.) Apparently I should have had this removed whilst in hospital but he thought they must have forgot. Oops. So in his most excited, about to give a present to a child voice, he said 'well, great news you can have it out in a couple of days! Isn't that fantastic? You'll be tubeless!'
I think he was a little surprised at my unenthused answer. Not the usual response you'd expect from someone who had had various tubes in their body for the past few years.

On one hand, being tubeless for the first time in five years was an amazing prospect...I could shower without worrying about infection and wear low cut tops once again...but on the other hand it did scare me a lot. Funnily enough I had actually got so used to having it, that it seldom bothered me. I guess you could say I was almost fond of the little guy, he kept me alive after all.

I was, of course, a little nervous about the procedure but the actual fear really came from the fact that I saw my line as a bit of a safety net - it was a comfort to know that if Kasper did decide to fall asleep for a bit, going on dialysis wouldn't be too much of a big deal...or at least that's what I was trying to convince myself. To me removing the line opened up a whole new can of worms. If anything did go wrong with Kasper I'd have to have an emergency line fitted followed by painful surgery to fit a permanent one. I've always lived on the side of caution when it came to kidney stuff and so by the Doctor telling me that they wanted to remove it in 3 days time I was a little thrown, it seemed quite a big step into normality, one I wasn't sure I was ready for...