Time for another installment of this Wednesday/Sunday night series!
Picking up from last time –
At the education session, I felt like a fool. (That kind of seems to be a running theme of the day, huh?)
They were showing a PowerPoint presentation, and I took pictures of some of the slides. However, I later realized when I looked in the folder they’d given me that the whole PowerPoint presentation was in there, printed out for us!
I can only imagine how foolish I looked to everyone else who realized we already had the whole presentation. Eeesh.
There’s really nothing new to say here as far as basic kidney donation information’s concerned. This session covered the same stuff OSU did. The only thing that was different was that you spend less time in the hospital at UCLA. At OSU, it’s approximately 4 nights. At UCLA, it’s 1. But at UCLA, they do offer you a room in a hospital-affiliated hotel, free of charge, for 2 additional nights.
I didn’t ask any questions in the meeting. I learned last time to just keep my mouth shut whenever possible.
Though, I did ask one question at the end [*shakes head at self*].
When I’d originally filled out my questionnaire at home, I remembered I answered all the easy yes or no questions first… I thought I left a couple of blanks in questions that required actual answers (“How fast can you run a mile?” etc.), with the intention to go back and fill them in. But I didn’t remember if I’d actually done that.
We turned in the questionnaires right as we walked in. I did flip through mine before I handed it in, but I didn’t look closely. And there was something mentioned in the meeting (about exercising or breathing or something), that triggered a little gasp in my brain. “Did I ever go back an answer those questions?! I don’t want them to think I’m avoiding those questions. Why didn’t I just fill out the whole thing in order?!”
So, I asked after the meeting. They did find my questionnaire and it seemed to be all filled out. But I just felt like when I asked, I asked in a pretty nervous way. I’m hoping it wasn’t all that bad, but with the stress and the not sleeping, I just imagined myself as a total crazy person frantically asking about my questionnaire. Aye, aye, aye.
There was a little time between the education session and my next appointment. So, on the way back, I stopped at this really cool place – Native Food Cafe (which is now one of my favorite restaurants (that happens to be all-vegan)). Yay for trying new things!
Of course, at the time, I was a little too nervous to really eat. So, I grabbed a bite or two and saved the rest for later. (Mmmm, and later it was quite yummy. Spoiler alert: I think part of that deliciousness was the satisfaction of a great interview. But we’ll get to that soon enough!)
Next up was the blood pressure screening, which I’ll get to next time.