Picking up from Sunday –
So, I was denied at OSU, which meant I could start over again. I’d just have to do it with another hospital. I suppose Cedars-Sinai (somewhat close to where I live) made the most sense.
The requirements at OSU and Cedars were different.
At OSU, I was well within the acceptable weight requirement to give a kidney.
While this is embarrassing… For Cedars, I needed to lose a little over 20 pounds before they’d even begin the process.
It’s so embarrassing to be fat – especially to be too fat to do certain things! So, it pains me to admit this is part of my story But I can’t escape the truth. I want so very badly to give a kidney to a stranger. I knew I needed to lose the weight not only for me, but for someone else.
So, I worked out harder, ate a lot smarter, and slowly but surely shed enough weight. Woo hoo!
I thought that that had to be the last hurdle… right?! I now had a much better idea of the importance of the interviews, and the amount of reverence with which they should be treated. I knew my medical tests would come back clean. So, we had to be all good at this point. Right?
Wrong.
After Cedars took a couple of weeks to look through and process my initial paperwork (with medical records from my heart surgery), they called to let me know their surgeon would not work on someone who’d had as many heart issues as I’d had.
They were nice about it. They let me down easy. They said, “Our surgeon is just very conservative. Just because we can’t take you doesn’t mean someone else won’t. We’d recommend trying with another hospital.”
Aye, aye, aye. Another one.
Well, at least this time I only lost a few weeks, and I didn’t have to endure any extra tests…
I did have to fill out what seemed to be a fairly large amount of paperwork – medical history, information about who was gonna take care of me, results of 3 blood pressure screenings …
So I guess I did have to have a tiny bit of non-exact testing that can be done at oh-so-many locations (not just doctors offices or labs) after all. But it barely counts, since it’s so convenient, non-invasive (and free).
But it’s all good. It was disappointing, since I felt like there was mainly one thing/person who held me back at OSU. Without that I thought it’d be smooth sailing. But when is life ever what you think?
Forging on to UCLA!