The News!

Well, it turns out I’m not crazy. At least not according to the psychiatrist I met with on Wednesday. He’s writing a glowing letter to the donation committee telling them that I’d be a wonderful candidate for donation. Yay! The evaluation took all of 20 minutes. He asked all the expected questions, and some that were a little weird. Apparently, sometimes after surgery a patient can become very confused and not remember exactly who they are. I’d never heard that before, but that’s what he said. Hearing that, I thought it meant he was going to ask questions about me. Likes, dislikes, education experience, etc. Boy was I wrong. He wanted me to interpret cliches (People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Two heads are better than one, etc), explain similarities between two objects (bikes & cars, trees and flies, rulers & scales, etc.), and name cities in different parts of the world. First three cities in California, then three in the US, three in Europe, three in Asia, and three in Latin America. I rocked the first four categories. And then we came to Latin America. The silence in the room was deafening. I just blanked. Couldn’t think of ANY cities at all. Countries? Sure! I practically named them all. But that wasn’t the damn question. I felt like such an idiot. I finally squeaked out Tijuana, which I was completely not confident about (I couldn’t remember if Mexico was considered part of Latin America. I always equated Latin America with South America, and I knew Mexico wasn’t in South America). The psychiatrist was laughing at me because I was SO upset about not being able to remember any cities. I was so embarrassed. Finally I just gave up. I was certain he was going to fail me. He told me that they perform the same type exams on their medical students, and that I performed better than 95% of them (which, by the way, does not instill me with confidence in the medical staff at UCLA). I felt so relieved! I still felt like an ass for not remembering any friggin cities in Latin America, but at least I passed the exam!

While I was at my appointment with the psychiatrist, the transplant coordinator left me a voice mail with the results of some of my other tests. Everything came back looking great! The only exam they hadn’t received at the time was the CT scan that I had last week. Those results came in on Friday, and they were also good. They did find a small cyst on one of my ovaries, and I have to get it evaluated by a gynecologist. I freaked out a little when she first told me, but she assured me that they are very very common, and that it’s nothing to worry about. Most women have them and never even know it. They shrink and swell with your menstrual cycle, so it’s completely possible that if they’d done the exam the week before or the week after, it never would have shown up on the scan. Alas, since it did, I have to get it checked out via ultrasound with my own doctor. The good news is that UCLA feels it’s such a minor thing, they’re already scheduling me to meet with the surgeons. That’ll be in the beginning of February sometime. I was so excited when she told me that they were going to set up that meeting. I mean it’s weird to get excited about having surgery, but I was so relieved that nothing (major) was wrong with me, and that I’d be able to go through with this. I told anyone who would stand still long enough to hear. Thankfully, I was at work, where everyone knows what’s going on with Kelly, so they were all very excited to hear the good news.

So that’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in the last week. I wish my life was more exciting, because I’d have more to post about. But, hey, giving away an organ is a pretty exciting thing. Maybe that temporarily makes up for the lack of things to post about in other areas.