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My wife swears since I received her kidney, I’ve become a nicer person. I don’t know about that, but I do have a strong urge to Windex everything in sight.
In one of the cruel ironies of life, kidney donors seem slower to recover from the surgery than recipients. Here I am, free of pain pills, wolfing down my food and feeling better than I felt before my surgery. My poor wife is still gulping pain pills and existing on small amounts of salad. Her friends and family are developing a severe hatred for this columnist — more severe than my right-wing letter-writers.
Consider this however, just 10 days after our surgeries, we sat lunching in Cafe XIX in the Bellevue Stratford (or whatever it is officially called these days). Love that modern medical technology. A big "thank you" to my Jeff doctors, Warren Maley and Adam Frank, our surgeons, and Dr. James Burke, my longtime nephrologist.
I also am feeling a little more friendly to our pharmaceutical companies these days. Yes, I know our drugs are overpriced here in America, but I like the fact our drug firms sink some of that money into research and development (reportedly only 13.4 percent of revenues compared to more than 23 percent on marketing). Because of their R and D, I take a pharmaceutical cocktail twice a day that is giving me back my life. And the great thing is Medicare foots the bill for 80 percent of the transplant drugs and Blue Cross covers the rest. It’s the kind of coverage non-seniors need too, so hooray for Big Government while we’re giving out kudos.
There is a whole army of people out there like me who are transplant recipients. Our clinic office at Jefferson was filled to capacity the other day with us carrying our red folders. We all looked exceedingly healthy. What we need are more donors. People who donate their kidneys after death are a national resource. There are not enough of them. There is nothing to fear. Don’t believe the myth health professionals will not try to save the life of a prospective donor. And there is nothing to prevent you from being viewed the traditional way after death just because you were one.
I read somewhere, in 15 years or so, they’ll be able to use pig kidneys in transplants. Bad news for the pigs, but great news for the rest of us. In the future, you might be able to get a roast pork at Esposito’s and a new kidney, too. I’ll take mine with sharp provolone.
As part of my drug regimen, I’m taking a steroid. It’s a small dosage and I’m still feeling wired and full of energy. Imagine an athlete taking megadoses of the stuff — it’s unfair. Right now, I can take most 70-year-olds one-on-one until they wean me off. I’m feeling like LeBron, baby.
Meantime, I’m spending my days watching the fascinating national debate between President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney. It is like nothing I remember in my lifetime. The debate should have occurred before we went to Iraq, but Mr. Cheney wasn’t interested in engaging in debate when he held office. One thing to remember, it did occur internally within the Bush administration and Cheney lost. That’s when the torture stopped. But all it will take is another terrorist attack and Cheney will claim vindication. He doesn’t explain how 9/11 happened on his watch, though.
I don’t know how I feel about prolonged detention policies being espoused by the president. It certainly defies our system of justice. Normally when we screw up, the accused goes free. In this case, there is real danger the accused are terrorists who will pose a threat to security. It’s another test for us in these trying times.
I don’t buy all the scare tactics about closing Gitmo and incarcerating terrorists in our maximum-security prisons here in the States. We already do that and no one has ever escaped one of our maximum-security prisons. Politicians from both parties are pandering to our fears on this issue because they know 30-second commercials will be run against them in the future.
It’s an exciting time to be alive and a helluva time to have a new kidney.
