Soooo, Dave has confirmed that his body is rejecting his transplanted kidney, Taq.

This isn’t surprising since most of his anti-rejection drugs were cancelled when he was diagnosed with lymphoma (post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, to be precise, which happens in 1% of transplant patients, usually not as quickly nor as early as Dave experienced).

Now that Dave’s chemotherapy has been completed AND his PET Scan results indicted that the lymphoma may be gone, his kidney transplant team has been evaluating whether to restart the drugs.

Guess Taq took matters into his own hands.

Biggest concern about restarting the anti-rejection drugs, which suppress the immune system so it doesn’t attack the transplant, is the possibility that any remaining cancer cells could perk up again.

Interesting side note:
We’d been told signs of rejection would include fever, lethargy, nausea, tenderness at the new kidney.
Dave doesn’t have any of those.
He didn’t have many signs of the cancer until the tumours were huge either.
Apparently Dave is a unicorn for not showing symptoms.

Super thankful that the post-transplant team has him scheduled for weekly bloodwork and that they’ve been following his trends closely.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known that Taq was in trouble.

Here’s the detailed message Dave texted from St. Paul’s Hospital:

“Just saw [the nephrologist], biopsy shows rejection, so I will get 3 high dose Prednisone injections, and high dose oral pred at home.It starts today, May not get much sleep tonight?

“Getting moved to a different room again?

“If creatinine is lowering then Sunday is still a possibility for coming home?“

#week23 #cancer #chemo #chemotherapy #posttransplantcancer #bcelllymphoma #posttransplantlymphoproliferativedisorder #tumourlysissyndrome

#week43 #posttransplant #kidneytransplant #kidneyrecipient #polycystickidneydisease #PKD #kidneydisease #savealife #donate #donateyourspare #organdonor #daveskidney #daveskidneyjourney

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