Talking to Justine on Skype

Ok do you think maybe we are taking this documentation of day to day stuff too far?

Chilling with Uncle Zeke

A visit from Simon

Finals

Oef! Today has been a big old day. Zeke was admitted to hospital at 4pm this afternoon, and so today was a crazy combination of trying to be calm and quiet, as well as distracted and upbeat. We had Kiara, Ryan and Andrew stay the night last night so it was a regular slumber party with bodies all over the house by 8am this morning.

Yesterday we had a visit from Cousin Simon, so we had a great big lunch with felt like a Christmas gathering. Great to catch up with Simon again and Gill was especially delighted to spend some time with him.

We kicked off with a fabby breakfast made by everyone, with far too much egg, cheese sauce and toast toast toast. Arts and Crafts followed next [Aunty Kate is at the ready with all sorts of time consuming projects] and then we ventured off to buy a CHRISTMAS TREE. Easily one of the highlights of living in Europe. So, there we were, four novice tree buying South Africans, one poor [but very obliging] Brit - his lovely dog Jake, and far too many trees. How on earth do you decide!? See the photos, we had a jol! We even has some presents under it thanks to Simon!

Home James for lunch and then we had quite a job getting the tree into the house, because I totally under estimated how tall the tree was. So now we have quite a scrapping on the ceiling from our lovely tree, but we also have a great big tree which Kiara, Andrew and Ryan decorated, and we're all in love with this new addition to the household.

At 3.30pm we had to face up to getting Zeke off to the hospital. Off we went, Zeke and I, and I am delighted to say it wasn't in the least bit traumatic. The staff on the ward are lovely and nurse Cherry [need I say more] stole our hearts. I left Zeke watching a movie on his iPod [see picture] and asking for more jelly, so he is clearly comfortable and at ease! We were enchanted with his hospital bed which is far too short of course, but has a fantastic remote control for all movement modifications. So there we were, lying on the bed together mucking about with the controls and squealing like silly kids!

But, the real story of the week folks, is one of mud and a bit more mud. I took the children for a walk yesterday at about 4pm. Ryan, being a boy, went directly to the muddiest part of the field we were in. He also got properly stuck. I stayed on the edge of the field trying to coach him out of it but in the end he was sinking pretty quickly, so I went in to help him out. I got stuck too, of course, where I lost my balance and fell over. I rolled around laughing in the mud for a few minutes, and then set to work getting Ryan out of this pretty mess. All the while having to convince Kiara and Andrew NOT to follow us in to 'help'.

Ryan eventually convinced me that he could 'run' across the mud if he took his gum boots off, so with nothing to lose after ten minutes of muddy sloshings, I agreed - - and he was right. At this point I was chastised by Andrew for not letting him help his brother - 'I am used to helping him you know!'

Then we had a big, up-hill walk home, complete with wet, muddy and very gritty feet for Ryan. I was wearing two pairs of socks so we did a sock-swap to make Ryan more comfy, and finally made it home. Took two hours to de-mud the bodies, and we are still clearing up muddy clods from about the house today. Some clothes might be binned.

So folks, that's it for now. Kiara, Ryan and Andrew are sitting with me as I type and helping me craft this crazy story. They say they are having so much fun! [good!]

We are off to bed I think. We are taking Richard to the hospital at 7.30am and after that, the The Kidney Crew is off to a Pantomime [Sleeping Beauty]. That starts at 10am - objective = a good solid dose of humour for distraction. Followed by lunch and hopefully a quiet early afternoon before we go up to the hospital again.

We'll visit Rich at 4pm, Zeke and about 7pm, and I will post a short update tomorrow night.

Kidney Crew Ready for Action

Hi everyone, Kate here.

Now that Gill is with us, we have a 'Full House' with the whole Kidney Crew present and accounted for.

Gill arrived as scheduled yesterday to a seriously chilly winter morning. We managed to get to the airport on time [The Zeke and Kate Show is not particularly good at this!] and whisked Gill home to the frost covered farmlands here in Oxfordshire. It was BEAUTIFUL day with gorgeous blue skies and not a breath of wind. [See pics of Gilly in the sunny conservatory.]

Rich, Dale and the children joined us for the much planned lunch - utterly delicious lamb Richard, thank you again for the pot and its contents. Sorry Dinie and Tannith that you couldn't have been here to join us but you were with us in spirit anyway - see the pics.

Andrew nearly missed lunch because he went walking through the fields [in newly acquired gum boots] and got lost in a small forest. He arrived at the back door proudly cluthing trophies from his adventuring - a handful of ice. He was breathless and cold with red ruddy cheeks, and ready for a hot lunch! Andy has designs on the rabits and pheasant - he tells me that he wants to practice his bushcraft - by trapping them in boxes! Not for eating purposes mind you, just for the sake of looking at them up close. [He is quite an accomplished hunter, but is horrified by unethical practices.] I am not sure how I feel about all this, but we'll tackle the box making when we get to that bridge I guess.

So, today sees Richard back at the hospital for a repeat of the dye test, and we get the results at 4pm tomorrow. Not much fun for him, he has to sit there for four or five hours giving blood every hour - - -and he has decided to do it on his own. We feel like we have abandonned him to the needles and bad food on offer up there, but he wont be persuaded to have company. Zeke and Gill have driven Rich to the hospital and are about to take the kids and Dale on a tour of Oxford. I have got a report to write so I am at home for the day getting that out of the way.

So that's us for now, K xxx

Happy Dad

Salon Kate

Leaf removal part 2

The Leaf Removal Team

All eyes on dad

Luggage galore- Andy and Ryan

Dale at The Lodge

Kiara writing letters to Father Christmas.

T-minus 3 days and counting!

Oxford has not got any problems! The weekend is upon us and productivity has soared with the arrival of Dale and a small army of South African muscle (Andy and Ryan) and the fair beauty of their princess (Kiara) to inspire us. Marshalled by the promise of pennies and pounds with which to bolster the fighting fund, the three of them set about collecting and moving no less than 80 bags of fallen leaves from the land surrounding The Lodge and depositing them 300m away at the bottom of the paddock, for burning – a mammoth task and willingly done – well done team!

The land is now ready for the arrival of the queen, who as we all know is being collected off BA054 at the crack of dawn tomorrow.
Then it was off to James St in Cowley to make ready the house for their month long stay. We have found them a 4 story English Town house in the heart of Oxford and spent 6 house scrubbing and sorting through the owners mess to make it habitable!!! Well, to the standard required by Kate and Dale at any rate. Needless to say everything was washed, right down to the sticky salt cellar!

On the medical front I met with my surgeon on Friday. He went to the wrong hospital and kept me waiting for an hour and a half. I assured him of where I would be on the 11th and made sure he knew how to find that particular venue! We then went through the procedure for installing a kidney and he seems to be aware of where that is going too so I am reasonably confident that he will be able to find the spot and get it all sorted out. There is a surprising amount of work to do and the tutorial was fascinating. Definitely more intense than changing the oil filter on my old LandCruiser, but the he does have a dozen or so pairs of hands to help so I think it about even!

Unfortunately Richards African metabolism seems to have done the dirty on him at the first scan of his kidneys last Monday and the results have come back as marginal. The doctor feels that this is most likely because he was dehydrated on the day and so his kidneys did not have much to do, the appeared not to be working as hard as would have been appreciated. Hence the poor man has to re-run the test this Monday again, and we will spend the weekend pouring gallons of the purest water we can find down his throat in an effort to get his kidneys revving at their peak for the show. This means another horse size injection of radioactive juice to make his insides glow like a Chernobyl circuit diagram, followed by four blood extractions to measure the remaining blood concentration of said juice as his kidneys get rid of it. At least this time he is an old salt and has his wife to comfort him. He should sail through. I am considering billing him for curing his needle phobia when all this is over…

Well, having installed the Africans in James st, we are home again alone, Kate and I. The place is very strangely quiet and uncluttered - and rather boring – and when we walked in we found that the African contingent had turned off all the heating radiators and flung open the windows in all the rooms. Yes the sun did make an appearance and it did take the temperature from 2 degrees to a stunning 4.5 degrees centigrade in 7 hours. But now we have to re capture all the latent heat we had stored on the furniture and the walls and the place is just off mausoleum cold…. I think they got a little over excited. Give them a week and well be taking them hot water bottles and ear muffs!

Transplant Diary day 7

Hello Again


We are a week into the pre-op work-up and things are drawing to a conclusion. On Friday last week Richard was told that he was a perfect candidate, from all appearances, to be a kidney donor.

This morning’s schedule has seen us arrive in heavy traffic at the John Radcliffe (JR) hospital, level 2, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine facility, 20 minutes late. Enough time for the worm in Richards head to turn and bite him into the stony silence that signals a deeply contemplative state. Understandably, he does not enjoy the ministrations of needle wielding nurses. Today they are particularly prickly having injected him with a nasty cocktail called DMSA. As it works its way through his system, being filtered out of the relevant organs at slightly (hopefully) different speeds, it will indicate which of his Kidneys is doing the most work. The signal for the one he is likely to keep.

While his kidneys do what they do best, the prickly nurse is going to extract blood from a butterfly catheter in his left arm. This needle has to stay there all day and will doubtless keep the worm biting in his head for the entire duration. The worm is making a meal of it!

Kate has come along to make sure. I think. Make sure we do not descend into a searing sibling mess. Make sure we get to the right place. Make sure we don’t forget all the things we men will forget, like home phone numbers (it can happen!!). Make sure we have something to eat. Something to drink. Most importantly make sure any unruly orderlies, receptionists and other hospital staff are not rude, stupid or slow. For this last she has prepared her letters of complaint in her mind already and rehearsed the scathing dressing down that any obstructive officer of health dares to advance, or even think of advancing. We are well defended trio and so far not even Richards’s worm has been able to evade her. She has “popped” off to the hospital store to see if she can get a thrilling magazine to distract Richards short and agonised attention span. I would not have thought of that.

Kate was not with us last Friday when we were with Dr. Harden, Urology Consultant. This was for Richards’s full physical examination and medical history. He was very thorough. We went through every possible affliction back to three generations. Dr. H took on the appearance of a really disappointed loan advisor in a bank as each malady was responded to the negative. For a healer and fixer of broken humans the good Dr. was unable to get his teeth into anything and adds his name to every medic with a 2000Km radius of Richards’s life for the past 41 years. He was almost perceptibly becoming bored as he reached the end of his check list. Until Richard got on the couch…,”Do you mind if I look down there?” came the forthright question.”No”, was the instant answer. Muttered on an inhaled breath the next words were from Mr., “Oh, My God…” followed by a blushing gasp from the latter. From behind the curtain (there is always a curtain to get in the way of the press), it was my turn to stifle the guffaws’, and massage the muscles in my cheeks back into the appropriate serene severity.

Later in the car the first thing he said was “Well at least we know the catheter will not be obstructed….”

Since then we have had a CT scan, more blood tests and lots of time to contemplate our navels. The navel contemplation has turned out to be very constructive. We awoke on one morning at our usual spritely winter hour (about 09:30) to find that Richard had been awake since 07:30 (this is a good 1.5 hours before the first sparrow thaws) and raked up all the leaves along the back of the house into nice neat piles. He then boarded the village bus and toured all the way to Oxford high Street and back before lunch. We have also noticed how the mere mention of a task to be accomplished is quietly seized upon and magically borne into completion. For example, on Friday evening I suggested that I wanted to use some old boards in the garage to erect some shelving. By Sunday evening I had not only installed the shelves I was considering, but had been marshalled into cladding the entire room with shelving from floor to ceiling. Bespoke shelving mind you and cost effective too, Richards’s advice having saved me in excess of £100. It included wrap around shelving in one corner, Sculpted shelving around the fridge, boiler, tumble dryer and garage door mechanism. There is also room for my 2.2m long trestle bench (with lighting installed above for maximum illumination). His first commission form my newly acquired facility was a half joking, “Now I want to see a 72ft yacht come out of there!”. Job done, broken kidneys be damned. Now to draw the yacht design I am going to need an architect’s table and ….


























Transplant Diary Day 8


Today I had a routine blood text and clinic appointment with my renal team. I went alone and everything was normal – well normal for an end stage kidney failure. Considering I have managed to stay off dialysis so far I should think this actually qualifies as exceptional. 9 days to go.

Today Richard spoiled us. Not only is he providing the kidney for Christmas [and much leaf raking!] but he also decided to cook a lamb stew for the arrival of his family on Friday. Bearing in mind that he had two strapping young boys to feed now, he bought 2kg of lamb! His will be a large stew, SA style. I am thrilled! I had to point out however, that the largest pot we have would mean cooking this lovely lamb stew in about three batches. Richard promptly extolled the virtues of the pot of choice for cooking of stews – and he has a very considered opinion taking into account size, depth and thickness of the base. Forthwith we sought out the local supplier in our nearest high street (Thame) and selected a “no26 le Creuset” which he would not be dissuaded from acquiring on the spot despite the not very Christmassy price tag! BRAVO BRO!!

Cast iron and glazed in sunset orange it is a masterpiece and inspires culinary action the instant you clap eyes on it.

Merry Christmas to you all!!

Key Dates

Hi everyone, just a quick summary of key dates for you.

Dale and kids arrive from Johannesburg [yipeeeee]: Friday 5th December
Gill arrives from Johannesburg : [hoooraaay!] Sunday 7th December
Surgery: Thursday 11th December.

So, surgery is two weeks from today.
K
xxx

Richard and Zeke 24 November 2008

Transplant Diary: Day 1

Hello from a frosty Oxford country side where yesterday morning Richard arrived from a much warmer SA on the scheduled BA 54 out of Oliver Tambo. Kate and I were very excited about picking him up from the airport and had a great Monday with him, catching up on all our news and showing him around our neck of the woods.

After 36 hours in our cosy cottage and one trip to the hospital this morning (more on this later) we are thrilled to report that he is noticeably more relaxed and at ease with what lies ahead. We all are. So if you are interested in the day to day we will post as often as possible and keep the news coming in. Today we met with the supervising nurse first who went through every step of the process with us - I wanted all the detail and Richard none, so she had her work cut out for her! We more or less both got what we wanted in the end, somehow, and went on to visit the surgeon who will be the lead on Richards operation.

Richard and I have different surgeons. Rich will be looked after by one Mr. Sanjay Sinha - he is an Indian specialist in charge of the live donor operation of the transplant operation, whereas another Indian colleague of his Mr Anil Vidya will perform my procedure. Apparently the way it works is that Richard will be prepared first and the kidney removed over 4 - 6 hours. As the Kidney becomes available it is processed for transfer by flushing and cooling it.

During the preparation time I begin my work-up and go to theatre where the site for the transfer is prepared. The insertion will be underway as Richard recovers from anaesthetic. By evening all will be complete and we will recover on separate wards until morning. If all goes to plan we are roused by the orderlies and prepared for "exercise" in the morning. They want us mobile as soon after surgery as possible and will be made to walk to reduce the chance of thrombosis. Happily the hospital time is anticipated to be a lot less than we were initially led to believe (up to 10 days). Richard should be home by Saturday 13 and I should follow by Tuesday16 Dec.

All this information was palpable until Mr Sinah explained that we'd awake to find catheters inserted into our bladders via the only available external access - YOU GUESSED IT! Up until this point I had been watching Richard closely for any signs of bolting. From my seat near the door of the consulting room, guarding it, I was rehearsing my routine to subdue him quickly if the need arose!!! However, as this gem of enlightenment reached my ears, it was Richard who took on the concerned expression. Glancing slowly at me he heard my breathing intensify, become shorter, and noticed the blood draining from my face. My pupils shrank to pinpricks and a sheen of cold sweat broke out from crown to fingertips....this has to be the worst fear I have of the whole deal....

Unfortunately the good Mr Sinah was not concerned with either my presence or my rapidly deteriorating state of mind. He was you see, briefing his patient Richard, and had discretely and diplomatically inferred that my "vote" did not count in this conversation. I gulped hard. I may have snorted slightly. This was, as per the familial code which has led our brotherly exchange since nappies and playpens, very funny for Richard to observe. Nodding sagely at the surgeon’s wise words and concurring with appropriate murmurs and comments, he extended the moment for as long as possible. All in an effort to achieve maximum effect and to assist in stifling the guffaws rising in the back of his throat....! This is called Brotherly Love. The plus side is it took the edge off what was in store for him next (which involved his nemesis - the dreaded needle). I was happy - as a concerned brother should be - that he was getting some humour out of all this anxiety. The Down Side is that he has managed to find about SIX opportunities in the remainder of today to remind me of my fear and relate his side splitting story to anyone who will listen. This includes long distance calls to SA!!!! We'll see who is laughing when the nurse starts pulling off his draws to remove his pipe from is other pipe on the 12th....;-] Another positive for the day was that blood extraction from Richard was totally event-free. He emerged looking decidedly relieved. After it was all over he was able to recite the clinical classification for diabetes - which was on a poster in his line of sight while the nurse was busy with her tools. He did not faint at all and was most happy about his I think. So nothing for me to chuckle at - alas.

We have two "days off" now as the blood results and those of his ultrasound to be assessed. More to follow.