Jim Duquette was discharged from Johns Hopkins University Hospital Thursday, three days after donating one of his kidneys to his 10-year-old daughter, Lindsey.
Speaking by phone, the former Mets general manager, who also was an executive vice president with the Orioles, said he planned to stop by Lindsey’s room for only the second time since Monday’s surgeries before heading home.
Lindsey, who suffers from FSGS (Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis) and has been without functioning kidneys since last year, is expected to remain in the hospital for at least another week. She’ll need another surgical procedure next week to remove a catheter now that she’ll no longer need dialysis.
“She’s really in good spirits,” Duquette said. “And the doctors are feeling good about how well it has gone to this point.’’
Duquette said the combined surgeries lasted approximately nine hours.
“Mine, for some reason, took a little bit longer [than expected],’’ he said. “Nothing crazy, but the surgeon said it took a long time to get everything ready before they took the kidney out. So mine taking longer delayed hers a little bit.
“I think for people waiting to hear the news it made it a little more difficult. Obviously, I don’t remember anything but waking up.’’
Duquette, who had been involved in every Major League Baseball draft since 1991 either as a team executive or as an analyst on radio or television, said before his surgery he knew he’d be in no shape to watch the draft’s first round, which was held Monday night. But he said he planned to watch on Tuesday when the rest of the draft was held. It never happened.
“I was so out of it,” he said. “But I feel fine now, more tired than anything else.’’
Duquette, a host on the MLB Radio Network heard over Sirius XM, said one of his first orders of business once he got home would be to go online and take a look at who drafted whom.
He said Lindsey’s hospital room was filled with cards and flowers and she knows she was mentioned on Mets and Orioles broadcasts this week.
“She doesn’t really understand that aspect of it,” her father said. “What she’s most excited about is the dozens of cards from her friends in the fourth grade that are in her room,” he said. “She can’t wait to tear into those.’’