Thanksgiving

A beautiful Thanksgiving day here in Dallas. A wonderful relaxed afternoon with family and some old friends, great food and drink and deep notions of how blessed we all are.

Late in the day, after the crowd had dwindled, we were talking about parents and aging. Susan's mother is battling severe arthritis in her legs and back and slowly losing her powers of concentration and memory. Her world has shrunk greatly in recent years, but she can still be a delight to be around. My parents lead an amazingly active life for their years, but they have their issues as well. Mom recently starting sleeping connected to an oxygen supply, a fact with which she does not seem totally comfortable. 

I commented that it's not easy to admit that one's life is technologically dependent. 

Helen laughed and said, "Yeah, you're one to talk!"  

She's absolutely right of course. If you look back at my earlier posts, the over-arching themes are stubborn denial and resistance to increases in the level of treatment.

It was then I realized that I'm still fighting technological dependence. I was able to recount my history up to the first dialysis session and then the telling stopped. I was able to write a day-by-day account of my transplant, but it's been difficult to starting telling the story of two years on dialysis.

I guess I'm still resisting that damned life-giving machine. But I am thankful for it.

Back to Work

Sorry for the delay. That last week, the last month was way intense! And then it culminated in a cold and four weeks of upper respiratory crud which finally seems to be clearing after a couple of weeks of antibiotics and asthma inhalers. Yuck!

Great news for the Hoefling families. Bruce's donor is 'official' and transplant is in the works. His brother is now kidney free. When the damn polycystic things stop working, all they can do is cause pain, discomfort and misery. The only thing that made me happier than getting rid of that last basketball sized kidney was getting a new one, well, getting one that was previously owned, to use the current nomenclature.

My story will pick back up after that first day of dialysis two years and two weeks ago. As I recall, it involved a nurse, a needle and a fistula that didn't want to be found....