That Time I (Hopefully) Gave Away A Kidney – Part 34 (The EKG)

October 1, 2014

Aurora's EKG (post-open-heart surgery)

Picking up from last time –

So, I go to their center to have my EKG done.

Everyone there is super nice. Again, even though this is a different building, I sit in a humongous (but differently styled) comfy chair to have my EKG done.

After the first one is taken… “Um, we’re just gonna have to take it again.”

Do not do this to me! You say that in the exact same tone they said that to me before I ended up in the hospital over and over again.

I’m not gonna draw it out of make this part too much of a ridiculously big deal. In the end, everything was fine. Basically, I called my amazing Boston cardiologist to say I’m trying to give a kidney and my EKG didn’t look perfect.

He took a look at it and said that while it wasn’t by-the-book perfect, it was well within a healthy range, and he believed I was fine. He also referred me to someone wonderful in Santa Monica. Dr. Milan (my amazing Boston doctor) said that this guy in SoCal (Dr. Doshi) was an old classmate from med school and was the person he’d send his own family to. So, that was very nice of him.

I went to see Dr. Doshi just to check in and such. He said that with all the work done on my heart and some scarring and such, I’m just most likely never going to have a completely and utterly normal EKG in my life. But it’s okay. My life-threatening issue is fixed, and he has complete confidence that I’d be an excellent kidney donor (at least heart-wise, which as my cardiologist, is all he can really speak to). He said he’d even write a letter to the kidney people saying so if need be.

So, great. He’s on my side.

But it didn’t really seem to matter, because I got rejected for other reasons…

By the way, a fun bit of dichotomy for you. During the very stressful experience was this kidney stuff… right after I got in the car from the hospital, I saw I had a new voicemail. It was the car dealership telling me the details to pick up my Price is Right car.

Isn’t it interesting how some things can seem so awesome and so not awesome all at the same time?

Let’s get into more not awesome kidney stuff next time.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?