Snoopy & y'all,
Snoopy's first posting disturbed me, due to an apparent naivete, perhaps even insensitivity, of [presumably] some centers. Not every donor-recipient pair wants to be in the same post-op room -- or even briefly in pre-op beds in the same space, as Sherri related.
WITHIN-NUCLEAR-FAMILY DONOR-RECIPIENT. The kinds of pairs most likely to be comfortable together are donor-recipients who are spouses, or are parent-child. Even in those kinds, though, exceptions will occur -- in parent-child pairs, children who are older [especially teens] or different sex from the parent donors may be uncomfortable. For within family donor-recipient pairs, centers should ask each person separately about his/her wishes, and do so in the same non-pressure manner most centers ask about desire to donate. (Ask each one separately, after telling both that the default arrangement is to separate them. That approach means that if one of the pair says "yes" to being together, and they end up separated, that the "yes" person does not know if the other had said "no" or if simply being together could not be arranged.)
NON-FAMILY DIRECTED DONOR-RECIPIENT. Many non-family directed donors have not experienced together moments revealing of body and bodily functions more than are revealed in public places. No center should assume both people in those pairs would be comfortable together in body-revealing gowns, passing gas & urine & poop, snoring, etc.
NON-DIRECTED DONOR-RECIPIENT. This group is most likely to have bad consequences of the center simply making them roommates, even if many such pairs turn out to be apparently OK in the same room. In the
The New Yorker article a few years ago about non-directed donors and recipients, the majority of an [admittedly] small number of non-directed donor-recipient pairs did not like each other once they met. In my case, the recipient-owner of her "new-used kidney" (that had been "recycled" from me) and I get along quite well. But in the days before we actually met for the first time, 15 months after our surgeries, I felt like I was on a blind date: "Will she like my wife and me? Will I like her and her husband? Will we get along well?" I did not want to have those questions coming to the fore in the post-op period. (I appreciated knowing right away, however, that the recipient's kidney, formerly my kidney, started peeing even before they connected its ureter to the bladder!
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As Sherri wrote, the need to protect the recipient from infection while starting the immune-suppressing drugs means that most centers restrict visitors to recipients somewhat and require a certain level of "infection precautions." A roommate -- any roommate -- in the same post-op room complicate those precautions. Moreover, those restrictions and precautions for visitors to the recipient also apply to visitors to the donor if the two are roommates -- thus unnecessarily restricting visitors to the donor.
Furthermore, just as donors may feel bad if they learn the recipient is having a complication or bad experience, so too recipients may (indeed will likely) feel bad if they see that donor is having a bad experience with pain, nausea, etc. In fact, the donation surgery is usually more painful and gastrointestinally upsetting to the donor than the recipient surgery is to the recipient. The reason is that the donor's kidney typically is not placed in the recipient's abdomen, but outside the abdominal cavity, just under the skin and fat in the lower pelvic area. (If the transplanted kidney were placed within the recipient's abdominal cavity, the recipient would have all the complications most of us donors either had or read about on LDO.)
Finally, several LDOers have reported emotional complications, even conflicts, within donor-recipient pairs after donation. Although not common, they should not be potentially exacerbated or revealed by the two people being roommates in the immediate post-op period.
Returning to Snoopy's original example, of a non-directed donor (who, I assume, did not know her recipient) being a post-op roommate with her recipient: not a good idea -- IMO as both a non-directed donor, and also as a family physician who has seen (and tried to help) too many different, difficult, emotional complications among people in close relationships.
Bill