"Welcome to Adulthood"

Day four. I was told yesterday morning (Thursday) that I could "possibly be discharged by the end of the day!" Enter an excruciating seven hour iron drip. Fast forward and here I am still in the hospital on Friday night.

Yesterday was tough. Wednesday night was the first night I spent alone in the hospital. I slept really well which should have been a good thing, but ended up being a huge mistake. Wednesday I was doing so well that they took me off my IV fluids and PCA (Patient Controlled Analgesia - which is a fancy way of saying button that I push to jack me up with instant pain relief) and switched me to oral painkillers. I took my dose at 9:30ish before I went to sleep Wednesday night and slept all the way through to 2:00 AM Thursday morning when I woke up because I have been peeing like a racehorse while I've been here. When I woke up to go to the bathroom, I didn't have any pain so I thought, "wonderful, I can just go back to bed." I woke up again at 5:00 to go to the bathroom and thought I was going to die. I hate to sound dramatic, but I have honestly not been in too much pain for this entire process but in that moment it felt like my muscles were shredding themselves with every move I made. I obviously got some percocet ASAP (I'm supposed to take some every four hours and had gone nearly eight without any) and tried to get back to sleep. Pain is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 here and over the next hour and a half I waited for my meds to kick in slowly realizing that it was just getting worse and worse (moving from a 9 to a 10 where 10 is the worst pain you've ever felt in your life). The morning check-ups usually start around 6:00 anyway so I wasn't able to get back to sleep since I had to keep rolling over to show my incision, get blood pressure taken, get shots, etc. this whole time. I finally dozed off around 6:45 and woke up sometime at 7:30 in a lot less pain (still close to a 6 or 7 which they still don't want me to feel). I made it through but definitely learned my lesson.

Later that day they got back some lab results and saw that I was extremely anemic (my iron levels should be at 20% and they were at 5%) so I would have to go on an iron drip. This was supposed to take around four hours and ended up taking seven. They had to slow it down part-way through because I was having pain at the injection site and the whole thing just wiped me out. I slept most of the day, so I think it was truly harder on Bobby and my mom watching me feel so exhausted when the day before I had been so energetic. Meanwhile my urine was getting progressively darker (due to not being on fluids and the addition of iron); at one point it was tea-colored and I could tell it really freaked Bobby out. They took more blood and ordered a urine culture just to make sure and everything came back fine. All in all, Thursday was exhausting and hard on all of us.

Friday was much more simple and can be described with one word: waiting. I woke up feeling better. I was definitely woozy from my drugs, but I woke up to take them in the middle of the night so my pain was under control. I was pretty much guaranteed that I was going to be discharged as long as I met "one final threshold." I had to break wind. Seems simple enough. I'd been on solid foods a full day and wasn't experiencing any nausea, plus the iron drip was supposed to cause diarrhea. Done and done. Except not. Every time I got close to food, I felt gross. My body was saying "feed me, I'm hungry," but my stomach was saying "sorry no room down here." Throughout the morning my bowels literally bloated up and my stomach distended. Any pain I had was due more to my backed-up tracts than the surgical incision. Lunch came, same issues. By 2:00 PM when they do afternoon rounds, it looked like I was not going home since I wasn't getting any closer to my "goal." Once that was determined, they thought they'd try and speed things along with.....wait for it....a suppository. Is it bad that my initial reaction was to run over to Jim and say, "I'll gladly give you my kidney but I did NOT sign up for this!" ? So with that wonderful news my doctor left and said "welcome to adulthood" whatever that means.

So here's the summary: suppository wasn't as bad as I thought. Kicked in much faster than the nurse thought. I finally met my threshold and should be good to go tomorrow. It would still be nice to get some solids out, but I'll take the baby steps for now.

No More Mrs. Crankypants

Goooood morning everyone; Stephanie here. Yesterday was obviously extremely exhausting, so I wasn't able to post anything then, but I got plenty of rest throughout the day and last night and woke up this morning feeling great!

As you have probably determined, everything went well yesterday. I did have a little bit of an anxiety attack right after I left my family and they started poking and prodding and I met a bajillion different nurses and doctors. Thankfully, they sedated me a little and all was good for the most part. Apparently most people don't remember their time in prep and holding, so they told me not to worry because I wouldn't remember the anxiety, but I remember every second. I'm just incredibly thankful for the wonderful team of doctors who were so supportive and made me feel like not-a-freak for my last-minute nerves.

Surgery itself went well. I was out until about 12:00 as expected and was able to see Bobby by around 1:00 in the post-op area. I haven't heard any crazy stories of reactions yet so I'll have to try and get the scoop on that. Once I made it up to my room yesterday, it was a lot of time catching up with family. It seems everyone was a little nervous and there were many tears shared throughout the day yesterday while we were in surgery. My main feeling yesterday was exhaustion. That and extreme thirst. It seemed every time I was about to fall asleep, a different nurse or doctor had to come in and check something. That along with a phantom phone call and a window with broken blinds led to a super-cranky Stephanie in the first couple hours after surgery. My mouth has been dry since I woke up but they let me have some ice chips last night and now I'm up to sips of water. Woohoo!

Jim is doing well. His surgery was delayed for about an hour due to some "technical issues" with the operating room. I think there were also difficulties with placing the donated kidney since my veins ended up being a little short. All that said, he's doing well today. As of last night, the kidney was producing urine and they could see it filtering blood through an ultrasound.

I was able to get up and walk this morning and went in to see Jim and it seems both our spirits are high today.

All the glory for my strength has to go to our Father in heaven. I have known for months now that He was calling me to this, and I can already tell the difference this has made in my life. Praise Him for all His blessings!

"Outta the way..."

Steph intended to post details about the donor evaluation process, but that won't happen tonight since we will be at the hospital in 5 hours and need to sleep. In short, all the tests came back with the right results and we are all ready for the procedure. Steph and I (and the recipient) are in good spirits and can't say how much we appreciate everyone's support and prayers. Please continue to pray for calmness and peace for all of us (Steph, me, our families...).

Tomorrow I will try to post on here but it will probably be another short one.

-Bobby

!TMI ALERT! The medicine they have her on (plus her all liquid diet) has kept her close to a restroom all evening, I feel bad laughing (kinda) but I know she would do the same. The title is what she said when the medicine first kicked in.

The 5 W's

I'm hoping to provide a little more background as to how all this came to be. Yesterday I covered the "what" that is going on in our lives. As far as "when," the actual procedure is going to be Tuesday, September 27th at 8:00. "Where" is also pretty simple; the surgery is taking place in Newark, DE at a local hospital with a wonderful team of people that I'm sure I'll share about later. "Who" and "why" are both a little more complicated to explain.

As I've talked to various people about this, the first question has always been "who are you donating to?" It isn't uncommon for people to donate to family members or even very close friends. When I first started looking into this, the recipient didn't really fall into either category. So here is the not-short-at-all story of my relationship with the recipient. It's no secret that my husband and I met at University of Delaware as undergrads. While we were there, we got involved with a wonderful campus ministry called Blue Hens for Christ. We met some of our closest friends through this ministry and it has had a lasting impact on our relationship and our lives. Bobby and I were close with both men who served as campus minister in our time there. In our later years, we came to know the second one as a true friend. One thing Blue Hens for Christ offers is the chance to be paired up with and "adopted" by a local family. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me since I went across the country for school. I happened to be paired with a wonderful couple from the church whose son was the aforementioned friend/campus minister.

So with Gwen, the other student the family "adopted" who was also one of my best friends, I got to know this wonderful couple and became close with my adoptive mom. Also during our time there, my adoptive dad (I apologize now for all the vagueness, anonymity and all that) found out he was entering kidney failure. I'm not sure I was in the right place at the time to even consider donation back then but we all kept him in our prayers and hoped for the best.

So that's the who. I know it's a lot, but I feel knowing the nature of our relationship makes the "why" that much more important.

The "why" itself is simple to me, but always needs a little more explanation (hence, I referred to it as complicated above). The reason to me is straightforward: it is what God is calling me to do. Period. That's enough for me. How I feel that calling is hard to explain. Again, our relationship, while pleasant, wasn't one that was super-close and I think the recipient was kind of shocked when I first spoke with him about it because of that. I was kind of shocked myself when God first planted the tiniest seed of an inkling in me. About a year ago I first started thinking about it; truthfully, I don't know why. But I know that God has had His hand in every step of the way. This whole process has been incredibly simple, albeit time consuming. I'll go into that a little bit more tomorrow.

Let's leave it at this: I know this is a wonderful gift that is being given, but to me it doesn't feel all that special. It just feels right. It feels like what I'm supposed to be doing and anything wonderful about it is due to God. He alone has made this possible, and I feel blessed to be a part of what is being done and the future testimony this will provide.

In Four Days

Well you'd think from the title of this blog, we'd wholly share what's going on in our lives with you. Thus far, that hasn't been the case...so here goes:

I'm donating a kidney. In four days. Now it's out there. We've spent the last year praying for this and the day is finally upon us. Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll get to share a little more about the background of how this came to be and all the steps it took to get here. In the mean time, please just keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We've been so fortunate to have tremendous support through all this and know that will continue!

Busy

Well, it's been a pretty busy month (and almost a half...) here in the Moglia household. With the end of the school year and the start of the summer term the Bobster was swamped with final presentations and tests and I've been busy at work making sure everything is squared away.

We're still hard at work trying to keep healthy. Doing really well with our whole "let's not eat out" goal as well. I'm personally really starting to feel results. Not just see them, but feel them. I have more energy when I wake up and throughout the day.

We need to work more on the whole eating local thing. Oh and the whole working out regularly thing. Baby steps, baby steps.

Nothing else too exciting around here, but the summer is shaping up to be pretty busy.

Enjoy your Memorial Day celebrations!

Small Step #1

We have a confession. We like food. A lot. Another confession: I don't always feel like cooking. With Bobby's inconsistent hours sometimes it's hard to feel motivated to plan a meal that there might not be time to make. What do we result to? Eating out. Oof.

So last week, we decided to set a goal. We want to limit ourselves to eating out only once each week. That may not seem like a big deal to most people, but because we both work full time, a nice home-cooked meal isn't always on the menu. I'm happy to say that week one was a success! We used our eat-out of the week last Sunday when my mom was in town. Nowhere fancy, but we'd been wanting to try a sandwich place in town and it was well worth it. I think it was better to head into the week with a concrete goal: we will eat AT HOME every night this week.

We still had a couple of nights where we were scouring our pantry trying to figure out what to eat. Solution: panini and soup night. We both eat sandwiches every day for lunch so when we first thought, "let's try paninis," it's safe to say neither of us were super excited. Let me be the first to say, it is amazing what grilling a sandwich can do. Dinner took five minutes, and I whipped up a nice carrot soup while we were at it. Granted, the soup took a little longer, but we had our sandwiches and waited for our HUGE carrots from the farmers market to cook all the way. The soup was a hit for me, not so much for Bobby but at 72 calories per bowl I will definitely be making it again (even if it's only one portion).

This was such an easy solution on a night we were tempted to go out to dinner for the ease and time it would save. Looking forward to finding more five-minute meals!

Tools of the Trade

One week in. Whew! We both decided to start tracking our calories and have been using a wonderful site. We found the site a couple of years ago and have used it sporadically but now we're both dedicated to using it consistently. Well....for now at least. The site is (drum roll please...) www.thedailyplate.com. It's run through livestrong.com and is hands down the most helpful tool that I've used.

How it works:
You start by signing up (FOR FREE) and setting your calorie goals. You enter your age, height, and weight and select a goal. You can aim to gain weight each week, maintain weight (what the Bobster is doing), or lose weight (my personal goal). Based on this information, they give you a "calorie goal" that tells you how many calories you need to consume each day to reach this goal. We know that this isn't exact because everyone's body is different and burns and stores fat differently, but it's a great starting point. One way it helps address this problem is by having you set your activity level. They range from sedentary to very active. I work in an office where I sit all day so I chose "Sedentary." Bobster works in an office and in a lab and is usually walking around somewhat and has to go to class throughout the week so he set his to "Light Activity."

Then what? You track your food. This is why we love this site so much, it makes tracking food INCREDIBLY easy. While we are aiming to eat more fresh, local product, we still go to the grocery store for the bulk of our product. Tonight we had kielbasa and rice. I type in polish kielbasa and have dozens of results to choose from. Unfortunately, we'd had this kielbasa waiting in our fridge a while so we didn't exactly know what brand it was, but if we did, we could have typed in the brand name and chances are you'll find the product you're looking for. It already has calories, carbs, protein, sodium, fat, you name it in most of the choices and if for some reason you can't find exactly what you're looking for, you can either enter calories manually or create your own product.

They also have tons of nutritional information from restaurant chains so you can search those right there, too! So that's it, you track what you eat, what meal you eat it for and it keeps a tally for you. You have a bar that fills up as you consume calories and it turns red (yeah it's done that a couple of times) when you go over for the day.

On top of all that, you can track your workouts on the fitness tab. Went swimming? Add it in. Did ab exercises? Add it in. Had a dance party? ADD. IT. IN. It subtracts the calories you've burned (an estimate based on your age, height, weight, etc.) from your running total so if you have a lower calorie allowance, you can make up for it by knowing exactly how many calories you need to burn. I may have done six minutes of jumping jacks so I could have the applesauce I was craving. And guess what, it was worth it.

So, whew! Long explanation, but a site that is totally worth it! Check it out and let us know how it works for you.

Coming next...fitness we love, small steps forward, and the recipe problem!

Good intentions

Well, week one hasn't gone too well. I got sick so my diet has consisted of Thin Mints since they're the only things that don't make me sick to my stomach. Not exactly healthy and not exactly local. Meanwhile my husband has been running around with research, homework, not to mention taking care of me so we both sort of fell off the wagon this week.

Maybe the weekend will be better?

Howdy!

Howdy y'all. Welcome to our attempt at a blog. A little bit about us:

My husband is in grad school at a large university in Texas. It's a ton of work, but he loves the work he's doing and we're doing our best to adjust to long hours with difficult homework. I work at the same large university and love everything about my job.

We met almost six years ago and clicked immediately. We have the same interests (sports, outdoor activities, etc.) and enjoy the same kinds of movies and tv shows, but ultimately we're a perfect case of opposites attract. We met at freshman orientation and dated throughout college. We got married last July (2010) and are enjoying soaking up every second of being newlyweds!

So why blog? Well, I am hopelessly addicted to a number of blogs and have always wanted to have some way to keep track of the things we do so we can look back down the road and have a great collection of memories. I also think it will help us stay motivated as we try to grow together.

For a variety of reasons, we've been wanting to work toward a healthier lifestyle. Both our jobs are pretty sedentary and living in Texas, the food is obviously phenomenal but maybe not so healthy. So here we are. We want to try to eat and act a little healthier and while we're at it work towards being a little "greener" too. This blog will serve the purpose of helping us keep track of things that worked and things that failed spectacularly and maybe we'll come up with some tips along the way on how to still indulge in the things we love (desserts anyone?) but maintain a healthier lifestyle. So expect a lot of talk about that but a lot of other stuff too!

Until next time!