Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Yet another bump in the road (latent tuberculosis)

I felt relieved that my marathon training and long runs was not putting my kidney at risk. I was hoping to get cleared/accepted as a donor when the transplant team dropped another surprise. Apparently, in a blood test done about a month ago, I tested positive for latent TB infection. This indicates presence of inactive TB bacteria. This is not infectious. Apparently the transplant team had "overlooked" (their choice of words) this result. I am scratching my head about how they can do this. The test report color codes results that are out of range in a different color. All out of range values are in a different column. I am told that two people (a nurse, and a surgeon) missed it in the first pass while a third doctor caught this while (to use his words) he was dotting the i s. (I am reminded of the  Invisible Gorilla test, though it is scary that out of range values are in the same category as the Invisible Gorilla.)

This has a put a degree of uncertainty on kidney donation schedule. The doctor's claim that this does not make me ineligible but want me to get treated for this before the transplant surgery. 

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