Three Things NOT Related to My Health Status

My next kidney doctor appointment is on June 22.  And, WOW, for once, nothing majorly dramatic is happening in my health life.  

Kidney Update: Two Year Biopsy

The results are in!  Er...they were in about a month ago.   If you've been coming back to this blog over and over hoping to see an update on my kidney biopsy I had in April, here it is!  I didn't meant to keep you on edge.  And just so you know what you're in for, I'M O.K.

Fixed, but Fearful

Last week, I went to the gym and was unable to get on an elliptical with a connecting TV, so I had to listen to my iPod. I usually use my time at the gym to watch cable, since Ben and I suspended ours six months ago and have been relying on Hulu, Netflix and Amazon for our televised entertainment. But it was OK. I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Snap Judgment.  It's a radio show where different people, essentially, tell stories about things that happen to them, and it's one of my favorite shows.  The stories are often compelling, funny, shocking, sad...but even the sad ones have a beautiful ray of optimism at the end, which I guess is what makes the podcast so good.

The episode I listened to was a collection of the editors' favorite stories from the past year and beyond. And boy did I pick the wrong time to start listening.  By the end of the first story I was in tears while trying to keep the pace on my elliptical. The second story continued the assault on my emotions. "Heart Failure" is the story of a woman's boyfriend who had  suffered four heart attacks by the age of 27, and it didn't seem like there was cure in sight. I'll leave out a big chunk of the middle in case you want to listen to it later, but *SPOILER ALERT* in the end, her boyfriend is somehow cured!  Fixed! His body simply stops having heart attacks.  It was so amazing.  He comes on for a bit while she's telling her side of the story and says this: 

"I still didn't believe it. It's too hard. It's too hard to get my hopes up. And I was just waiting for it to come back, almost like the worst old friend. It had just been around for so long. But I'm OK. I haven't had a heart attack in over two years now. I run five to eight miles a day. I can make plans for the future now, and I couldn't before." 

Return to Metro

Last Friday, I FINALLY went back to my original nephrologists at Metropolitan Nephrology.  The last time I made an appearance in their offices was apparently in January, and the last time that I was SUPPOSED to go see them, was actually in April, right as I was checking into the hospital for having no immune system.  

Returning to your original doctors can be pretty significant.  It usually signifies to the patient and to the hospital doctors that things have finally normalized  That the kidney can function without me having to go to the hospital every week to get urine and blood taken.  That I can take a breather from having to digest all the different lab results and adjust to all the changes in my medications.  Returning to my original doctors gave me some peace of mind for once, during a summer that's been hectic as far as doctors visits, lab visits and bouncing levels of white blood cell counts.  

Whenever I'm in my original nephrologist's office, I'm always reminded of one thing:  that I am lucky.  Blessed.  You'd think that over time the "congratulations" and "how are you doings" from the nurses and doctors would die down. Yeah, I had a kidney transplant.  But it was a year ago.  Why all the fuss still? I figure they must see this all the time.  But in reality, they probably don't.  I think it's more likely that they see someone who's much older than 27.  We're talking more like 67, because as soon as I sit down in the lobby at my doctor's office, I get the glances from a few older people, reminding me that I'm the odd woman out.  One of these things is not like the other, you know.  But I'm more like them than they know.  And I'm also unlike them.

As I walk back to the doctor's office before getting my results (everything was normal, minus a 1.9 creatinine level; a tad high), I sit in the "patient's chair" zoning out on my phone.  Sifting through the latest articles on Us Magazine and whatnot.  One of the nurses walking down the hallway stops and yells into the room, "Jewel! So how are you doing?  How's your dad?" And I give her the verbal thumbs up.  "It's just so great, isn't it?" she says when I tell her that I feel good.  I nod and smile and let her know that it really is.

---

Before I left my appointment, my doctor had to check a urine sample I gave him.  I sat in the waiting room reading through my lab slips and appointment summaries and a new sheet that they're handing out to all of the patients.  It's a sheet about kidney disease, the risks, how to prevent it and how to treat it. The first question on the sheet read "Are you at risk for kidney disease?"  Considering that I was already sitting in a kidney doctor's office, giving me this information seemed like a little too late.   But even upon a first read, I couldn't tell if I was still at risk for kidney disease or not, because I no longer have any of the symptoms they usually assign to a person with kidney disease. 

As the doctor came out to tell me my urine test clean and that everything was OK, I grabbed my stuff to leave.  Before I opened the door, I turned around and yelled "Hey Doc, I was reading this form.  I think I may be at risk for kidney disease."  

We both laughed.  

Dehydration Situation

So I went to the hospital last week. My second home.  Actually, I'm not gonna claim that. I DO love my wonderful team of transplant doctors/nurses etc and I actually enjoy seeing them and talking to them.  However, I think I'd prefer to enjoy their company at home, or at a nice restaurant.  Not at the hospital.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I have to do heavy lifting at the hospital. I literally sit in a bed with my arm stretched outward, watching television or eating.   But being in the hospital can still be stressful. I try to look at the situation with my rose-shades on.  At the end of the day, though, I know that the hospital stay is costing me money, time away from my job, and time away from other things I may have wanted to do.  And then there's the stressing about when you actually get to leave the hospital.  Because ONCE YOU CHECK YOURSELF IN, YOU CAN'T CHECK YOURSELF OUT!  At least, not if you want your insurance to pay for it.  

But yeah, the doctors can keep you there for as long as they want if you're still not in tip top shape to go home.  So there's always that worry:  how much work will I really have to miss?  Eight hours or eight days?  And how much will this cost;  $200 or $2000?  And how many episodes "Scandal" am I going to miss?  None, because they have cable in the room. Duh.  

Anyhoo, I went to the hospital last week because I haven't been drinking enough water.  Can you believe that? Even after all of this when I told you that you should drink a ton of water to stay healthy.  Look at that. I don't even take my own advice. I should just delete this entire blog.

But it was an honest accident.  Recently, I started taking more pills.  It got really, really hot outside and apparently I didn't notice because I'm obsessed with summer and being HOT. I started working out five days a week at the ass crack of dawn.  I started walking around outside at lunch. I started getting busy and doing more fun things and not drinking as much water because...activities and FUN. And laziness. And forgetfulness. And stupidity.  And...and...excuses!  Lots of them.  I'm the Jenga champion of excuses, laying one carefully--VERY CAREFULLY--on top of the other. 

When am I going to remember that having a chronic illness or a chronic health problem means my health has to be a priority.  Taking care of myself can't be an afterthought like it might be for some really healthy people.  I can't look at people without health problems and scowl and HISS and spit (suddenly I'm a feral cat).  I can compare myself to the "healthies" and think "OH but they don't walk around with three gallons of water."  I need to focus on doing what's right for MY body.

So guess what all those excuses for not drinking water led to?  Fatigue.  Nausea.  Headaches. Stuff that I just passed off at first as "Jewel and Ben's super late bedtime" effects. Oh, and then I had weird circulation issues.  Tongue dryness.  Then my blood work told the tale and sang the song of what was going on inside my body:  high creatinine (2.5. Yoooo. Not good.), high potassium, low kidney function.  

I'm not sure if skimping on drinking water did ALL of this but I know it's part of the problem.  I needed water.  A lot of it. So my doctors instructed me to go to the hospital and get IV fluids in hopes that all those levels would go down a LOT.  I don't know if they did that much.  But going to the hospital was a big wake up call for me.  Sometimes I complain about being 27 and having to take my blood pressure, and not eat that much salt, and take pills, and drink 3 liters of water a day, at a minimum.  And I complain about doing all this and how I'm STILL not being completely OK. But I seriously need to cut that s&*t out.

I'm here. I'm still alive.  And I'm hydrated!  And my skin looks GREAT.  And I want to do things the right way.   I don't want to be that person who loses their donor kidney because they didn't drink enough water. 

So now every single morning, before I leave for work, I drink a liter of water.   This is not easy.  But it's not that hard either. 

Transplantiversary-- What Happens When I Get Sick Post Transplant

The Transplant-iversary

Nobody said the journey would be easy.  But after being healthy for even just a few months and having people tell you how healthy you are, and how great you look, it’s not hard to let to the thought consume you that maybe you are out of the woods; that this challenge has been pretty easy.  

From May until December, the remainder of 2013,  I never fell ill, even after watching several coworkers, my dad and Ben latch onto colds and flu-like illnesses as the temperature dropped.  I felt like my dad’s kidney had not only given me more energy and better blood levels.  The kidney had also seemingly given me some kind of invisible force field that kept me from getting even the weakest sore-throat-inducing virus floating around in the air.  It was nice, for a while to imagine that I, the girl who technically had the most suppressed immune system among my friends and family, was actually insusceptible to congestion and mucus-filled coughing. Obviously, me having a kidney transplant meant that the antidote to every infirmity, disease, illness, sniffle was in my blood. YES! Superman status, achieved, I thought.

~

January 2014.  My perfect months of not really rigorously washing my hands like I was supposed to and only using hand sanitizer some of time seemed to come back and bite me.  One day I was fine, living the dream of being in perfect health. The next day, nasal congestion and mucus had arrived, jamming a flag into the middle of my sinus cavity and screaming "We're HERE! We HERE!"  It's not like I had never had colds before.  Perhaps me being overzealous about "doing things the natural" way actually made it worse. I stood in front of the stove with my head drenched in steam and my nostrils getting singed, imagining it was actually working.  I'm still not sure if it was working. I found out from my nurse coordinator that I could take sudafed it turned out.  So I drove out into the midst of a snow storm and bought a box of store-brand decongestant and slept for the first time in four days during that time.  Recovery:  one weekend of Sudafed, sleep and trash TV.

~

March 2014.  I blame Vegas.  I was touching all kinds of hand rails and drink glasses. As well as those little chips they give you when you actually win money while playing black jack.  I want to say that's how I contracted CMW aka the virus that everyone, except for me and like 10 people, has had at one point in their lives. At the start of my symptoms,  I'd woken up with a fever.  I rode the bus into DC to cover a conference for work...standing...hauling purse, lunch box, and laptop bag...half a mile uphill from Dupont Circle Metro...with a fever. The runs came soon after that.  Recovery:  8 weeks/ongoing sort of, Valcyte, and moving really slow.

~

April 2014.  I stayed home from work after feeling horrible and waking up with a bit of a sore throat and a headache.  I took my temperature and I had a mild fever.  Nothing I didn't think I could sleep off. Then I vomited.  Twice.  My next course of action was to call my doctor, who suggested I go to the E.R. and once there he suggested I admit myself to the hospital where I had my transplant surgery for overnight observation. To my surprise, what the doctors observed via numerous vials of blood taken from my body was that I kind of had no immune system.  The medicine that I had been taking to resolve the March 2014 incident, combined with the medicine I was taking to suppress my immune system, had weakened my bone marrow production SOOOO MUCH...that basically it wasn't making white blood cells or red blood cells or much of anything else at the moment.  Meaning...I had no immune system.  Yeah.  That happened.  Recovery:  four days in the hospital, two blood transfusions, two IV sites, a lot of blood drawn, a lot of prayer, 90 seconds of crying, and one full length movie (Pacific Rim).  

~

Things were going well for for so long after my transplant!  I felt indestructable.  And then January happen, and since then I've been sick almost every month except for February.

BUT...I've also been HEALED and RE-HEALED in every month...except for February, I guess because I wasn't super sick then.

Every time I had a fever or felt a little off, sinceI hadn't felt that in a really long time, I just assumed my kidney under attack.  That it would be rejected soon. That I tried my best, and we all hoped for the best, but that it just wasn't going to work.

But I was healed and re-healed. 
I was healed and re-healed.  

I was HEALED and RE-HEALED!!!  

Superman status, achieved.

“Then my favor will shine on you like the morning sun, and your wounds will be quickly healed. I will always be with you to save you; my presence will protect you on every side."

Isaiah 58:8

Translantiversary--How to Stay Healthy Post-Transplant

The Transplant-iversary

The one-year anniversary of the day I received my kidney transplant is approaching.  Yesssss!  I'm excited about it.  Why?  Because it means I'll have accomplished what seemed like a daunting goal nearly 12 months ago. The goal-- to keep my kidney.

A lot of things could have happened between last year and this year.  I could have gotten really sick.  Or, I could have decided to not take my medicine for like a whole week.  Or, I could have just had bad luck and had the kidney fail.  

But we are SO CLOSE y'all!  So close to being able to truly breathe that sigh of relief knowing that I survived the first year of living with a kidney!!  Surviving the first year of marriage doesn't get here until June 15.  The jury's still out on that goal.  

If you have a transplant, I think it's important to accept that the new kidney does not have kidney disease.  It has taken me all year basically to get used to saying I don't have kidney disease anymore.  You spend so long having one thing be "your truth."  Once that thing is no longer the truth, it's not easy to completely switch into a new mindset, even if the new truth is so much better than the old one.  I had to really learn to walk in this new space of being healed and free from disease! But, it's just as important to recognize that we have some control over our health. And even though I'm OK now, I like to try to maintain some semblance of a healthy lifestyle, even with a suppressed immune system.  

Follow a healthy diet.  So the transplant fixed 98 percent of my health problems. But I knew that I couldn't just go all cray-cray and dive into a bowl of heavily salted cheese puffs just because I am walking around with a working kidney.  I was determined to maintain some piece of the diet that I've been trying to remain dedicated to for the previous 10 years prior to my transplant.  I absolutely love food.  I live to eat, for real.  And let me tell you one thing that I've learned:  that desire for food just grew stronger after receiving a kidney transplant.   No joke, at a recent surprise party I thought someone was going to have to burn the pizza boxes because I was CONVINCED that I needed to eat an entire pizza.  

Since the transplant, I've continued to follow the wonderful low-sodium diet.  It's the only diet you'll ever hear me advocate for on this blog.  I eat just about everything except for raw fish.  So I'm not the person who's gonna tell you to just eat kale.

The key to doing this low-sodium thing is to cook your own damn food.  That's the number one way to control how much salt you put into your body.  Too much salt = high blood pressure = possibly kidney disease, heart disease and other s*%t you probably don't want happening to you.

Attempting exercise.  This is definitely an area that I struggle in.  I wake up every morning to exercise, saying "I hate mornings. And I hate working out" without fail.  I'm just...not a gym rat. I like the feeling that I get after working out but during the exercising process, I'm less than thrilled.  However, I have to do it now that I'm "normal."  My post-transplant diet allows me to eat more foods and my cravings are stronger because my kidney is working correctly.  Which means...I can gain weight!! It's not uncommon for a transplant recipient to receive an organ and come back a year later with an extra 50 pounds on them.  I don't want to be that person.  So, I cry and curse and force myself to do lunges every morning until I forget what I'm doing and where I am.  

Taking temperatures and blood pressures.  This kind of saved my life a few times.  If I was ever having a day where I felt crappy I'd take my temperature to see that yes, I was indeed feeling crappy with a low-grade fever.  Before my last stint in the hospital, I'd taken my temperature every day and it was normal.  The day I went to the E.R. it had spiked to 100 degrees. I say this because, this isn't something regular people do--take their temperatures every day.  But it's something transplant patients should do frequently to make sure they don't have some kind of infection brewing underneath the surface.  Before this, I didn't know what it felt like when you have a temperature. But now I do, and that makes the difference between catching something that could destroy your kidney super early as opposed to finding out later, after you're back on the waiting list for a new organ.

Keeping a transplant healthy is not difficult at all when it comes to the things I can control. Its the other factors, the natural way our bodies are built to defend against a foreign presence and the effects of medicines that suppress our immune systems.  Those things, we can't control. But then I guess one of the best ways to keep yourself healthy post transplant involves building up a good attitude about your new situation.  Not worrying. Learning how too celebrate and be thankful for what you have in that moment. Understanding that even if you have CMV or forget a dose of meds, there's still a chance to fight to keep what we've been given. 

Throwback Bonus!

 A portrait of me, running around like a chicken with no head or wings, the week of my transplant last year.  Enjoy (again)!

How to Be Semi Productive

Celebration Time

The Transplant-iversary

New Posts Coming 

April 28

Faith Through Hearing-- Got Hope?

"Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  Because of His great mercy He gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death.  This fills us with a living hope, and so we look forward to possessing the rich blessings that God keeps for his people.  He keeps them for you in heaven, where they cannot decay or spoil or fade away."

1 Peter 1:3-4

**Inspiration for this blog post came from a Godly woman to whom I promised I would not give up on Jesus if the tomatoes in my pizza garden do not grow.**

 

Bein' sick is hard, isn't it?  I ask this and just assume that you, dear reader, at some point in your life have been sick. And I'm not just talking about my kind of sick .  I'm not just talking about the kind of sick that is days, weeks, months of depressing health reports; miniature anthills of prescription drugs; and having to welcome Valium and anesthesia into your blood stream more times than you care to count.  I'm also talking about the sick where you wake up with a pounding headache.  Or maybe you've vomited twice in one hour.  Or hell, maybe you just sneezed three times in a row while you were waiting outside for the bus because, well, springtime.  

Because let's be real here--we've got a lot of crap to do during the day.  Am I right?  Do you have a to-do list with a million things on it?  Let me guess...you have a "plan," a "blueprint" for how the hours should flow into each other and how you are going to check off each and every single task.  You have an idea, a thought, a hope for how whatever you do in the next minute, hour, day or 17 months is going to make your life AWESOME.  

And to do that thing or those things, you need to have a body that's working at 100 percent.  

The sick person's hope:  I need the headache to go away so that I can think straight and get that dream job that I've been thinking about for the past 10 years.

The sick person's hope:  God, I need to breathe!  So I don't have to spend anymore money on those stupid stickers you put over your nose that claim to open up your sinus cavities.

My hope, once upon a time:  I need to get my kidney transplant YESTERDAY so that I can A) finish planning this wedding; B) get married to Ben; C) go to Greece because D) I need to be see things and travel as much as I can before I have kids so that E) I won't feel shackled to my life here in Virginia and wish that I had traveled more and done more stuff like drink wine or go to Vegas before I got fat and birthed three minions...BASICALLY, God, Your gonna give me my sister's kidney in February so that I can make my life AWESOME.  

I'm just one person. I'm in my 20s. And yes, I'm incredibly selfish at times. But that was my hope for a while.  I can see clearly now... And I'm not ashamed to admit that I was pretty f*$#ed up for thinking that way.  

If you've been on the blog for a while, then you know what happened.  I didn't get my sister's kidney.  I didn't get it in February.  Shoot, I didn't even get to go to Greece right after my wedding! I had to postpone it!  Yeah!  Sucks, right.  And I was destroyed.  My entire family was destroyed.  I read this here.  Sums things up way better than I can:

"If our future is not secured and satisfied by God then we are going to be excessively anxious. This results either in paralyzing fear or in self-managed, greedy control. We end up thinking about ourselves, our future, our problems and our potential, and that keeps us from loving.  If we don't have the hope that Christ is for us then we will be engaged in self-preservation and self-enhancement."

--John Piper

As a former chronically sick person who will always be able to understand the "sick person life perspective," being sick is hard. During much of my time living with chronic kidney disease it was so EASY (super easy) to turn my focus away from God and what He's said over and over again that He has for me and will do for me, and turn it inward toward what can I get for myself.  What can I do/eat/say/ to heal myself? I'm not saying we shouldn't strive to take care of ourselves when we're chronically ill!  Especially since receiving a kidney transplant depends so much on how well you're able to maintain health leading up to the surgery and post-surgery.  

But...what if we gave in to a hope that's in something better? A hope that's not necessarily in your sister's ability to pass the donor exam; or a hope that's in the doctor who makes the final decision about her approval; or a wedding.  LOL Sorry. I have to laugh because weddings are ridiculous things to put your hope in (I've been there.  I can say this. So HA).

What if we said...

"Hey God, I'm gonna take my pills and cut out my sodium intake and walk up and down the escalator instead of just standing because I really want to stay healthy so that I can get a kidney.  But, at the end of the day...I know you'll take care of me.  So even if I stood on the Metro escalator that one time coming out of the station, it's gonna be alright. Because you promised it would. And my hope is in that promise." 

Just a thought.  It's hard being sick.  It's hard living with sickness. He never promised life would be easy, but you, person reading this, are better for all the hard times you've endured.  Trust me God. You're awesome. 

The One Time I Wished I Hadn't Received a Kidney Transplant

I really dislike going to the dentist.  I like the feeling of having clean smooth teeth and gums that feel like literally all the gunk in between the cracks have been scraped out.  And I guess I am OK with knowing whether or not any of my teeth roots or dead, or whether I have a cavity the size of a crater.  I've heard that those things can lead to brain infections if not treated.  But I just don't like going to the dentist. I can't stand getting my teeth and gums scraped with what feels like the worlds teeniest scalpel.

Now it seems like going to the dentist is more important than ever, according to my doctors.  With my immunosuppressant's and my dad's precious kidney, I have to do whatever it takes to stay healthy...and I guess that means not walking around with bleeding gums and unfilled cavities.  So Ben and I made our dental appointments, our first ones two years, for February.  

The new rule is that before I have dental work done, I have to call my nurses/doctors and let them know, just in case I need to take an antibiotic or something before hand.  A simple visit to the dentist for a cleaning can turn into organ rejection real quick if an infection happens.  That'll leave a person who hates the dentist thinking, "Man....I knew I should have just let my teeth rot."  Or maybe that's just me.  

Prior to the cleaning, my dental hygienist and I had a little conversation about my medical history.   Actually, I can never have little conversations about my medical history.  They usually turn into something like:

Nurse:  I'm just gonna take your medical history.

Me:  OK

Nurse:  Any aches and pains now?

Me:  No.

Nurse:  Any history of heart disease?

Me:  No.

Nurse: Any major surgeries?

Me:  Um...kidney transplant.

Nurse:  Oh really?????

Me:  Yeah.  I'm special.  

The fun part is when they ask me if I'm taking any medications. 

I told the nurse that I had taken a Bactrim earlier in the day, but that was it.  That's the only antibacterial I am taking and I figured that since my team of medical people never called me back, that I'd be good to go for the mouth torture cleaning.

 

Fast-forward to that evening. I started to get ready for bed, but I had one last thing to do.  I had to take my medicine. Because I can't function early in the mornings, I've been taking my medicines around 10-11 AM, and at the same time at night.  So usually, I have to remember to grab my preorganized pill box in the morning before work. 

I went to my purse to grab my pill box.  I pulled it out of my purse and before I had a chance to empty out what should be the last dose of the day, I stopped.  And I realized, there were two doses in the box.  There was a dose in the morning divider, and a dose in the evening divider.  

I felt like my bare feet were glued to the carpet, because I couldn't move into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water until I made sense of what I'd seen.  There were two doses in the container--one does in the morning divider, and a dose in the evening divider.  Two doses, not one.  At the end of the day, there should only be one.  Why? Because I have to take one dose in the morning.  I knew this. I repeated this in my head.   There shouldn't be two doses.  There should be just be one.  There should just be one.  

There should have just been one.  But there were two.  It was right there in front of my face.  I was staring at the clear plastic container, and 20 pills were staring back at me.  I should have been greeted by just ten.  But instead, 20 pills were there in "Monday's box" to remind me of how might have just majorly screwed up my life, my family's life, and disappointed a ton people.

My fingers clasped around the box as I finally unstuck myself and walked to the kitchen to grab that water I talked about getting.  My heart was beating so fast that my hands shook as I filled up my glass under the sink.  I could feel a nervous heat building on my neck.  I was so overwhelmed with the thought of "what happens next" that my vision became cloudy and even the taste of water nauseated me.  

What happens next, I thought.  Does the fever start? Do I start vomiting again?  Do I go to the doctor and get my blood drawn? And what do I do when the results come back all screwed up, showing high levels of everything that I don't want in my body? How do I answer them when they ask me what went wrong?  How do I tell them...my husband, my family and friends that my kidney had failed again?   

How do I tell them that, actually, I had failed?  I'd have to tell them that I didn't heed the doctor's advice. I'd have to tell them that I'm irresponsible. That I'm careless.  That I took it for granted.  That in not taking my medicine, in missing that dose, I showed that I was an ungrateful daughter that neglected to take care of the one great gift that was given to her from the most selfless father in the world.  

Even worse, I'd have to admit to God that I wasted His blessing--that I suck.  

I started out of the kitchen towards the bedroom, ready to come clean to Ben. Ready to commence our panicking together.   I started to tell him:  "Ben.  I missed a dose.  I didn't take my medicine this morning. I could have sworn that I took my medicine this morning!  But I didn't! I missed a dose."  I could feel my blood pressure rising as the flood of worst-case-scenarios leapt off my tongue and into mid-air.  Ben let me vent but ultimately he remained calm and simply said: "OK, well just take the next one."  Really? I thought.  As if that is going to be enough. 

I took my medicine and while in bed that night, my eyes bore holes into the ceiling. I couldn't sleep, so I prayed for peace.  I knew that I had no way of knowing whatever would happen next.  But I prayed that in whatever happens next, that God would let it all work out in the end.  I prayed, yet again, for what seemed like the millionth time, that God for just keep me healthy, keep me healed.  I prayed that even in my failure, He would give me a pass, just one more time.  For once, I remembered a scripture in that moment:  

Don't worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart.

Philippians 4-6 GNT

And that was it. I simply went to sleep because after all the commotion of the night and anxiety over kidney failure, I realized that I didn't really have the time or the energy to stress about my kidney anymore. I had to just let it all go. I just had to.  Because frankly, I was exhausted.  I had actually worried myself to the point of exhaustion.

What did happen next?  I woke up the next day, went to work, and took my morning dose of medicine at my desk.  And I continued with my day.  I took my evening dose.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  That was over a month ago.

 

 

That One Time I Missed Most of March Because of White Blood Cells

Oh Haaaaaaaay.  How has your March been?  Pleasant?  A bit cold? A bit boring?  Have you been sick for the past two weeks?  Have you been thinking, 'Oh maybe I just won't get better until April and will have an excuse to take the rest of the month of March off'?  No?  Really?! How bout that.

Well, I'm back to the world people.  I'm finally remembering what it's like to not lay in bed 24 hours a day.  I enjoy the taste of food again.  I enjoy fresh air and sitting in a clean apartment, sleeping on clean sheets, not worrying about how many additional viruses are burrowing their way into the mattress while I breathed hot, infected air into my pillow.  I am alive. I am not a zombie. I am real and I am on my way to healing.

If you came to this blog in the past two weeks, you probably saw nothing.  Nothing good anyways.  It's true.  I've been sick for two weeks.  And let me tell you:  I ain't felt death that near since this time last year when I was gearing up to start dialysis treatments.  And I wanted it. I wanted it so bad. I wanted to go home and be with Jesus.  Dance with the angels and break thermometers because I knew I would never need them again.  That's how sick I felt.  

Why and how in the world did I end up like this?  Well, you can thank my kidney transplant for that. I'm sort of joking but sort of not because it is kind of sort of relevant to how all of this happened.  

Remember when I told you that now, with my kidney transplant, I was going to have to take medicine for the rest of my life?  Those medicines are called immunosuppresants.  In case you missed biology (don't worry; pretty sure I slept through 80 percent of it) your immune system is what keeps you healthy.  It's [hopefully] made up of a bunch of white blood cells who's purpose in life is attack foreign objects and bacteria that make their way into your body.  Usually those foreign bacteria (stuff not made by you), can make you really sick if they're not dealt with correctly.  So most normal people have a good army of white blood cells who fight off these things and keep you from having to take any sick days, in case you were wondering why you never get a cough every once in a while.  I'm sorry, but this is probably it.

White blood cells are good for stuff like head colds and the flu.  But bad for stuff like organ transplants.  Because even though my kidney transplant is good for me and keeps me alive, it's still foreign.  So according to my WBCs, it needs to go.  And this is why, I take immunosuppressants:  to keep my WBCs from building up their army, so that they can't call out my kidney for being a foreign object.   The results:  my dad's kidney gets to live in my body as a spy forever, working alongside my natural organs....but I also am more at risk for contracting things like CMV. 

Cytomegalovirus.  In a nutshell, you probably have it because apparently 90 percent of the population gets it at one point in their life.  It just doesn't make everyone want to die because most people are healthy.  

For the rest of us--the 10 percent who randomly never got the virus and the immunosuppressed--when we are infected by this nearly harmless virus...it can make us feel like solid S&#T until we get treated for it.  

So, now I present to you:  five things I wouldn't wish upon anyone:

1.  Diarrhea.  

2.  Pain in your eyeballs so bad that you start to wonder if you have a brain tumor and regret that time when you didn't wash your hands for exactly 20 seconds before putting a new pair of contact lenses on.

3.  This weird thing in the upper middle part of your abdomen that makes you cry when you walk and also makes you think you have an ulcer and/or cancer according to WebMD.

4.  Sleeping for 24 hours.  Unless you're into that sort of thing, which I am only SORT OF into that type of thing. I love sleeping, but I don't love worrying about getting a blood clot that's going to travel to my heart and I won't know about until I'm on the plane to Greece.

5.  Cats who clearly don't understand "Noooo I DON'T want to get up!" when you're lying in your bed face down for the 15th hour in a row.  They seem to think: maybe I'll just meow LOUDER and then the human will move.  It doesn't work like that, cat.

I am finally starting to feel better people.  I'm eating again.  I went to the gym. I'm staying up late again.  Ben and I hugged for the first time a few days ago.  Things are looking up.