HTA Interview

Getting really close now - less than three weeks.  Yesterday was the HTA (Human Tissue Authority) interview.  They have a legal duty to be satisfied that I am under no duress or coercion, and not being rewarded in any way for donating. As part of this, you have to prove your relationship to the recipient, which we did with full birth certificates (NB not the abbreviated one as you need parents' names on it) and lots of old wedding photos for ourselves and some of our siblings.  We have often had a photo taken at these events showing the seven brothers in order, with the new bride in the middle - never thought these would come in handy!  The only worry I had was that I don't look as young as I was, so I also took an old passport to prove that it was me in the pictures.

The HTA also want to be assured that the donor understands the risks of donation and the possible things that could go wrong, so a decent read of the four page HTA document is required, as well as listening carefully to the things that the surgeon said in our earlier interview. It all went well and the interviewer said that she was satisfied, so that's a done deal unless there was something fundamental that she forgot to ask.  I also had a few pre-op things done - some MRSA swabs, some more bloods (as always!) and a fasting abdominal ultrasound, which was done by a doctor and he pronounced that there were no issues seen.  NB I don't know why this was needed - did they think my insides might have changed since the last one in August last year?

The next step is the final cross-match check which will be done six days before the op - another visit to London - and then everything else will be done the day before the op.

Starting to feel a bit nervous or apprehensive - the same sort of feeling as the imminent arrival of a long-awaited exam day.  As I've said before, this is all the sort of thing that I had expected as a natural consequence of making the donation decision last year, so it's no surprise really, just a realization that the summit seen from afar is actually getting quite near!