I woke up feeling toasty and warm.  They had an air blanket over me blowing warm air onto me.  My throat felt terrible (because there is a tube down it during the operation – sucking on ice cubes is the best thing for this.)   I made a noise and they all crowded round.  I think I asked if it was over, if it had worked.  They told me the kidney was already working I think (it can take a little while sometimes.)

Everyone was on a high, especially me.

They gave me ice chips for my throat but I wanted a cup of tea.  The nurses laughed and said no.  Then the doctor came over to have a quick chat.  I asked him for a cup of tea and he laughed and said of course.

So I had my cup of tea and then they wheeled me back over to the ward.

I remember closing my eyes, thinking it would be really funny to pretend to my family that I was dead, as they wheeled me in.  Unfortunately I was giggling so hard that they just didn't get it.  Morphine is a wonderful drug.

Then of course I threw up my cup of tea.  (Sometimes you really should listen to the nurses, but in fairness I was off my t%@s.)

I wiggled my toes furiously as instructed, told everyone I was going to get up that day – no need to wait for tomorrow – and then passed out halfway through a sentence.

When I woke up I was a little more sober, and scared to look down. I could feel that there were loads of cables and tubes attached to me, and I was afraid that they were all "going in me".  Of course half of them – like the heart monitor and stuff were just sticky taped on, but I didn't know that.  I was really itchy too, apparently the epidural (which delivers the morphine) was up too high, so they turned it down a little.

I also had to re-inflate my right lung, which had been squished down during the surgery.  This is one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had; imagine blowing into a wet rubber glove that is all stuck together, and each finger popping out one by one – but once again, as I was high on morphine, it was weird but okay.

(One of the things that the doctor had prescribed for me (as well as all the pain medication) was a nebuliser to help my breathing.  Unfortunately somehow this got forgotten, and I only finally got this on the third night when I reminded one of the nurses.  Even then it didn't work very well and I couldn't see the point, so I gave up and had a little nap instead.  Although you may not be with it enough to check that you are getting all of your prescribed treatments, if you have a friend or relative visiting you it might be worth asking them to run through everything with the nurses.  The fact that I didn't have a nebuliser probably didn't have much of an impact, but, because of the pain in my right lung and rib cage I did stop breathing properly and a few years later started developing chest infections.  I've also read about other donors developing chest infections straight after the surgery and you really don't want to have to cough at this time!  I am writing all of this so you will be aware of the importance of breathing properly.  I know it can hurt, but if you want to avoid chest infections down the line please try and breath properly as soon as you are able.)

Later that night I woke up, my back was really starting to hurt.  I pressed the call button and asked the nurse if she could turn the morphine up a bit.  (The epidural works best if you are sitting or standing – lying down it doesn’t get to the right spot so efficiently.)  She was very sweet, said yes, and then accidentally turned it off.  Then she had to rush around to get the key to turn it back on – it locks so you can't overdose.  I gritted my teeth as the pain got slowly worse as the medication wore off.  When she finally got it turned back on again it took a while to kick in, eventually I drifted off, but woke up the next day feeling pretty rough.

(I just wanted to add that you may also react to the general anaesthetic.  I had three operations on my gum over the years before this, and so had three general anaesthetics; each time the reaction got less, maybe because I was older, maybe because the drugs got better, or because I got used to it, so it didn't affect me after this op.  My first time I was quite nauseous, so it's worth remembering that this is quite a natural reaction, but if you are on morphine you probably won't care – and it's not as if you'll be trying to take any oral pain medication!)