Update On A Future Transplant

Maci had dialysis clinic today and we finally received some answers on "what's next?". 
Maci will NOT be receiving her next transplant in Memphis.  The director of the transplant center at Methodist said he wouldn't transplant Maci here again which means no other surgeon under him could  transplant her either.  I have my own opinions on this but for the sake of trying to be more positive, I will choose not to share.  I will say that it was nothing I had not expected so it did not come as a surprise.

The Nephrology team at Le Bonheur of course remains supportive and we talked about options for Maci.  We will be getting referrals to Birmingham, St. Louis and Pittsburgh.  All three of these hospitals have a reputation that speak volumes and I will still be researching them all in more depth.
The initial step will be to send each hospital's transplant department information on Maci to see if they are willing to consider transplant surgery for her.  If so, we will take her for an evaluation.  Most hospitals will have accommodations for us and also programs to cover the cost of travel. 
We still face the issue of the difficulty of a kidney match but it was mentioned today that another hospital may be willing to revisit the idea of Rick as a donor.  If so, by having a living donor it COULD, potentially simplify the transplant process.....maybe.

We have no idea how long it will take for other programs to respond and if one, most or all were to say yes to seeing Maci, we have no idea how long the process will take.  This is just something else I will learn patience for....I truly believe that Maci's next kidney will come in God's timing, not mine.  In the meantime, I continue to pray.  

If interested, the below few paragraphs explain desensitization:
"By nature, your body doesn’t react well when foreign objects are introduced into it. It’s safe to say that your body would consider a new kidney – or perhaps more precisely, the antigens associated with that kidney – to be foreign. Your immune system would produce organ-rejecting antibodies that would guarantee transplant failure without a desensitization treatment protocol prior to surgery.
Of the 80,000 or so people on the national transplant waiting list, it’s estimated that as many as 30% of them are hyper-sensitive to the markers on the surface of donor kidneys. Stanford Hospital’s Kidney Transplant Program is one of just a handful of medical facilities nationally with a rigorous desensitization program for both deceased and living donor transplantation.

IVIG infusions involves giving such highly sensitized" patients a high dose of intravenous immunoglobulin, or IVIG and other medications. The IVIG infusions, which may be repeated over several months, lower the number of organ-rejecting antibodies in patients awaiting transplants. Hospital researchers have also developed a new assays system that allow us to see specifically what antibodies a patient has, and to predict which ones are going to go away with IVIG infusions.

Ordinarily, if a person receives a kidney from a person with a different blood type, his or her immune system will recognize the organ as foreign and attack it. A process called plasmapheresis is used to remove the antibodies against the different blood type."  (Information taken from the website of Stanford Hospital - stanfordhospital.org)