Hello everyone.

Well our kidney transplant is over and so far a huge success. However I feel as if I have been to hell and back. It was absolutely awful and had I known how bad I would feel I don't think I would have chosen to do it! Perhaps it's just as well I didn't hey!).

My remaining kidney has already taken up the slack and is working at 75% of what my two kidneys were. So I lost 50% physically but only 25% functionality.

My husband has, so far, no rejection and is doing better than expected. He's down to 3 weekly clinic visits instead of daily. His creatinine (the main measurement of kidney function) is down well within normal limits - the lowest he's had in a decade. He has 60% kidney function (of what two kidneys would be expected to do) which means the new kidney is performing at least at 100% and possibly higher. Still a lot of pain for both of us but we are back home and this is healing.

Hope you visited the web-site for my articles even though I wasn't able to send a newsletter. Here's the latest article from the Deafness site at BellaOnline.com.

Testing understanding with a cochlear implant
It’s now one month since my second cochlear implant was switched on and it’s time to test what sounds I understand.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art66727.asp

Please visit deafness.bellaonline.com for even more great content about Deafness.

To participate in free, fun online discussions, this site has a community forum all about Deafness located here -

http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=207

I hope to hear from you sometime soon, either in the forum or in response to this email message. I thrive on your feedback!

Have fun passing this message along to family and friends, because we all love free knowledge!

Felicity Bleckly, Deafness Editor
http://deafness.bellaonline.com

One of hundreds of sites at BellaOnline.com