04.12.11

a mouth full

Boy oh boy… still reeling – as I am sure you all are – from all of last month’s revelry over (no, not March Madness) National Kidney Month!

Of course you know that no  kidney transplant would be complete without the concomitant twice daily dose of pharmaceuticals.  Mmmm… immunosuppressants… almost like ice cream with sprinkles.  Am I sensing a certain jealously amongst the readership??

On the timeline of medical history, renal transplants are a very recent achievement.  Scientific research and documented procedures were just beginning to be used for this procedure near the start of the twentieth century, and success was meager (short lived) even with the animal “volunteers”.  Not until 1954 was the first truly successful kidney transplant completed between two identical twin brothers in a Boston hospital. The brother’s identical tissue match helped eliminate the rejection that would normally occur by introducing non-matching tissues. This became the great hurdle for genuine long-term success with kidney transplants: rejection due to tissue mismatch. By the 1980′s great strides had been made in the development of anti-rejection drugs (immunosuppressants).  These medicines, along with the continual improvement in transplant procedures have greatly improved the success rate of kidney transplants.  For which I am forever thankful.

A few minutes each weekend are now dedicated to organizing my little box of pharmaceuticals for the week ahead. A far cry better than organizing my schedule to accommodate three times weekly dialysis.  One more thing for which to give thanks.

Each of the two anti-rejection drugs must be taken on schedule morning and night.  And while there are only two of them, the correct dose requires several pills of each drug along with some vitamins and an anti-viral medicine.  Colorful and a bit daunting.

Early on I secured a wristwatch with an alarm to remind me to take this medicine at the appropriate hour. Unfortunately the watch chime is not unlike the unceasing ring in my ears (another bonus from this whole experience).  It is not uncommon to have my watch beeping away at 8am or 8pm while I carry on in my natural state of blissful ignorance.  And receiving subtle reminders (nudges, stares and “Ahhh-hem”!) from family and coworkers that my dopey alarm is annoying them.  Rumors have been floated that they may fit me with a canine shock collar.

8am and 8pm don’t always arrive at the most opportune times… work, church, concerts, meetings… but I usually remember to silence my watch alarm or sometimes not.  I remembered to silence it last Friday night at the Gammage Center while we heard the ASU Symphony Orchestra and Choir.   At the intermission I nimbly tripped past half a row of concert-goers to find a water source.  I found a pair of drinking fountains near the hall entrance, poured my little packet of about nine brilliantly colored pills and capsules into my palm, deftly thrust the entire fistful into my mouth and bent to wash them down…

I just used nimbly and deftly in same paragraph.  I apologize for this egregious overuse of these lesser known adjectives.  Sometimes that happens with some of the more unruly adjectives that sneak onto the page and parade themselves shamelessly about as though we could not live without them.

Gammage opened in 1964 and is the only public building in Arizona designed by famed architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  The concert hall has terrific acoustics and none of the three thousand seats on three levels are beyond 120 feet from the stage.  Broad sweeping walkways inside and out make it accommodating to all.  And by all we need not limit ourselves to the human variety, for apparently I had in my haste to locate a drinking fountain stumbled upon the drinking fountain designated for Tempe’s burgeoning population of gerbils.  I gave the rotating handle on the bubbler a mighty twist and out of the polished brass spout rushed about six little drops of water.  Plenty enough for a domesticated thirsty rodent, but scarcely enough for a slightly less domesticated adult human male with a bag of pharmaceuticals beginning to stick to his tongue.   Again and again I twisted the fountain handle, each time producing a mere glimpse of the precious liquid before receding back into its underground vault.

Surely the adjacent fountain would not be a Gerbils Only fountain.  I glanced at the man next to me as he raised his head from the fountain and gave a look that said, “I’ve no longer any compassion for gerbils”.  Gammage’s sweeping walkways are looking very very narrow and very very crowded as I wend my way through the masses in pursuit of some liquid relief.  Could I just swallow them? I wonder as I move through the crowd.  I could try, but if I fail and this gradually dissolving array of pills stops short of my stomach we may be watching more than Beethoven tonight. Finally, there it was: a real drinking fountain with a real gushing stream of water and real humans drinking from it.  A few gulps and the drugs were freed from the roof of my mouth and my tongue.  On this night I am especially thankful for cool clean water.

Oh, so you think my story a stretch… ASU.  Maybe a little bent out of shape over the use of their fountain.

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