The Biopsy

Sean Dana Photography - UCSF from Mt. Parnassus

Twelve hours, half a day, bright morning to misty night, lights on, empty parking lot, lonely dropoffs, UCSF does a good job at sticking to the schedule. They told Jackie to check in by 11:00 am and she could go home by 11:00 pm.  Our parking receipt says we parked yesterday morning at 10:14 am and we paid our handicapped patient parking fee of $6.00 at 22:31 hours last night, twenty nine minutes ahead of schedule.  The surgeons do their best work 9 to 5, it's probably written into their contract, you'll be out of here every night in time for dinner, a game of racquetball or whatever it is that you want to do do after executing the will of God and returning the living to their waiting loved ones.

Reapers Waiting Room - Dark Art

A very efficient and exacting operation, someone in the Administration must know how lonely it is to be the only person in the Family Surgical Waiting Lounge after midnight when the tiredness starts to win out over the anxiety and darkness takes over and you fall asleep with your head on your hand, dream crazy dreams and wake up numb and in pain and you still don't know anything.  It was different yesterday than it was nine months ago on August 14, 2015 after the surgeons transplanted Terry's kidney into Jackey's abdomen and Jackie was bleeding uncontrollably into the small hours and they kicked me out of the recovery room while they tried to stop it. After a couple hours and three transfusions they wheeled her back into her room and the real recovery began.

After checking in they had to test Jackie to make sure she was ready for the biopsy of Terry's kidney. It was just a prep ward, very little privacy, a gentleman checked in so I left Jackie and the other patients to their privacy and care of the staff.  I walked down to the Botanical Garden in GG Park, took a lot of pictures of the spring flowers you can see on my FB page , walked around for a few hours, bought a bouquet of cut irises after looking at so many and climbed back up Parnassus thinking it would be over.  Well, nothing happened, Jackie was ready to go home when the Nurse told her she passed on her third test and she would be going to have the biopsy now.  So I went to the Palio Paninoteca across the street for a coffee, walked to my car and fell asleep.

I walked back up about 6 pm and the ward was empty, kind of an alien abduction moment in my post car nap partial consciousness, but they had transferred Jackie to a private room and it was all done.  She told me they had no less than five Doctors and a Technician during the procedure. They gave her a pill early on to relax her and the anesthesia for the biopsy but she was awake and told me all about it. She felt the anesthesia needles but that was all.


They use a needle gun that shoots into the kidney and retracts with a tissue sample for analysis.  So we watched some TV, Jackie had a dinner, took a nap and we went home, all on schedule.  Today Dr. Shoji (?) called, in less than a minute she told Jackie her kidney was completely normal !  I don't know about you, but being normal has always been a major goal in my life. This procedure was supposed to be done three months after the transplant but because Jackie was on some medication the hospital had to delay it until now, when she quit taking that medicine, so it's a long delayed milestone and a relief that everything is ok.

Jackie is still working half time as the Science Resource Teacher at her school, for spring vacation she wanted to go up and see her Mom.  We had an unexpected and fun trip to Lake Tahoe, been a long time since we were there.  The Nevada side is so beautiful, stopped at a small cafe over there on the way around the lake on our return trip.  Drove a lot of miles but it's always worth it to get up to the Sacramento homestead and cook a bunch of food and have a family dinner.  Check out my Facebook page if you're interested in some of those leisure activities.  https://www.facebook.com/DaveEEo.