Out for a walk

Trevor came to visit today he was released Thursday. He is doing and looking great. Ben has of course been here the whole time supporting. The surgery was really tough, 8 hours instead of 3! I lost a lot of blood and had to have blood transfusion during surgery and for days after. We had some other surgery complications with my arteries, but everything has worked out great. My creatine, measure of toxins in the blood, is 1.7 today. This is really amazing considering we also had antibody cross match numbers. I still have to under go a treatment this week and kidney and bone marrow biopsies for the next few weeks at least. Everything looks good so far. Trevor is on his back to Minnapolis on Sunday and I already had my first tbone moment so we will see what happens with his kidney! Thanks for all of your support. I should be out of the hospital by Tuesday and back to the Gift of Life Transplant House. www.gift-of-life.org 705 Second Street SW Room 24.

Transplant Update

Trevor came up to visit today, I just returned from the Intensive Care Unit, we had some complications and I had stay there longer than expected. The kidney is doing well though. Trevor is feeling pretty good. I guess I'll update later in the week. For now I am just resting, getting some blood ect...Thanks for all the support.

Success!

Just a very quick update. The transplant was a success. Dea & Trev are both recovering well. Dea is still in the icu, but will be released to her room later today. I will do a more indepth post then.

- ben

It's a GO!

as of yesterday, Dea and Trevor's cross match #s were still in the 330s (need to be under 300 for a transplant) but after more treatment for Dea and another blood test this morning....297! Trevor started his surgery at 12:40 and Dea at 1:30. The Great Midwestern Kidney Swap is underway! thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts.

i'll keep posting here as time allows.

ben

Trevor's here!

Trevor arrived at Mayo last night. Today we met up for coffee at this little Italian shop after IVIG. Trevor and Ben are having fun roaming the grounds here at the Transplant House, our home away home. They are currently playing pool while I rest. I will be here for 6-8 weeks, same room 705 Second Street , Room 24 Rochester, MN 55902.
Trevor is a good friend of mine from Fairbanks and I am so grateful that he is willing to donate his kidney. Here is a pic from Casner Glacier, one of my favs. Typical Trevor picture, he is always goofing around and super fun to hang with. Trevor is known for his great laugh and Liser and Trevor's birthday last year we laughed a lot (aka the toiletini)....
...also his great dance moves, he is always king of the dance floor with the ladies...
Thanks to all of our friends in Fairbanks for their awesome support. Thanks to everyone for making our temporary move to Mayo easy. Thanks to our friends and family everywhere for all of their help and good thoughts. Well, back to facebooking for Ben, Trevor and I...as I said on Facebook, we are dorks.

Mayo in Winter

Ben arrived today and it is great to have him here. We received 6" of new snow last and it is super windy .

Ben and I at IVIG, Intervenous Immune Gobulin is a treatment that you have after PlasmaExchange to trick your body into thinking you have antibodies. Trevor will be in tonight to Mayo and hopefully he does not get stuck in the snow storm.

Update

They had an ice sculpture contest the other day. Now it is all covered in snow. Here in Minnesota, it is cold and windy(not as cold as Fairbanks). We did get the cross match numbers back today and they were OK. I do have to have a catheter placement surgery tomorrow and start Plasma Exchange, followed by IVIG. Together it is about 6 hours of treatment a day, 10 hours on dialysis days. I have this routine Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We do another blood test Monday morning and hope for the best! So good thing I am starting my sweater project today, I have plenty of time to knit!

Mayo Clinic

We have been at Mayo Clinic since Wednesday and so far so good. They ran a crossmatch blood test with Trevor and I and the results were still good. So far no plasma exchange/IVIG routine, but we have another test Monday. We are going to take it day by day with the blood tests until the Transplant on Feb. 24th. We decided to get out of town today and drove to Lanesboro, which is a ghost town in winter. This picture is suppose to be of a waterfall in the background, but all I seemed to get was the brown tress. The sun was shining and it was great to be out walking around.
My mom and I went out to this bad Italian restaurant for dinner, but then we ran to the Gelato store and they were closed. I gave them my "Pella sad face" and they totally opened up! Score!

The Gelato, I love this stuff. I guess I won't be posting any crazy AK pictures for awhile, but the Midwest is fun too.

Last Weekend in Fairbanks

We had a busy last weekend in Fairbanks. i fly on Wednesday morning to Mayo Clinic in Rochester and begin the pre transplant tests. I was able to have one more big knit session with Kristen on Sunday and of course Kita came to visit Pella. they are totally buds!

Zoe

Zoe Strauss was in town this weekend, a good photography friend of Ben's. She is really doing well and it was exciting for Ben and all of us to spend time with her. She loved Fairbanks and Alaska and her positive energy was just great. We headed out to Ivory Jacks for a burger and show her a good local Fairbanks restaurant.


We drove up Murphy dome road to Jackson's for a house warming party. Here is Ben giving the old grizzly bear a pat.


his driveway was long and on the way out the truck would not engage the 4 wheel drive because of the cold and we got stuck! luckily there were plenty of people to help.
ben and i have been looking for houses lately. this can be tough in Fairbanks, where literally anything goes. here the DC10 house next to this house off the old Steese we were looking at.