So I went ahead with my donation last Thursday. Although I'll never know my recipient, I was told that he or she was doing well and that the kidney proceeded to go into overdrive making the poor sap pee something like 4L in a very short amount of time.
Pain was not as excruciating as I had expected. I weaned myself off the Dilaudil on the Friday because it was making me nauseous and itchy and today, my first full day at home, I'm testing out if I can do without the toradol and the tylenol. 9 hours since my last dose and I am feeling more coherent and less light headed. There is pain, but not excruciating.
Had a few meltdowns in the hospital, one when the transplant coordinator came to visit. But it was a weird I'm so happy I don't know why I'm crying kind of moment. Then on the Saturday, having gone on several solo walks around the ward and being newly freed from the IV post, I got it in my head to walk to the Timmies at the hospital. I didn't know just how far it was. I got there completely exhausted, staring at the lone timbit I asked my boyfriend to get me, feeling too sick to take a bite and too weak to talk back to the ward. This was followed by a sobbing wheelchair ride of shame my room. There I did finally eat the darn timbit and I'm guessing the effort helped reawaken my digestive system. My boyfriend, ever the cheerleader, put things into perspective using the MEME that is now my avatar on this forum. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to pop some stitches.
Also I'm a bit surprised that I only seem to have two small scars (although one is still with steri-strips so maybe there are two under there and one large one (though I can feel that the bikini scar also includes a vertical cut under the skin at 90 degrees. I thought that there were supposed to be 4 port holes and one hole to retrieve the kidney.