Long hours for now....

Thank you to so many friends reaching out! I have been delighted by the phone calls and love and hope to return it all.

Dialysis is going a little better everyday. My lord, it takes 8-9 hours a day!!!! Truly unbelievable. Hope to be able to convert to 9 hours overnight by Christmas, but I have to pass a PET & kinetcis tests. The waking hours not on the drain/fill bags are severly limited. And some of that time is prep: cleaning, sterlizing with bleach, restocking & heating fluids, disposal. And the insulin pump/diabetic care continues throughout the day! I now understand why people don't work when on dialysis. Of course, I think I am an expert on time managment so I'm learning do my computer work and work calls, etc, while I am draining/filling. Yesterday was the first day that I sat at my desk during the process. I forecast that I will be doing that from now on. I have a better understanding that my work does make me happy.

The symptoms of kidney failure are so weird and encompass so many systems of my body. I've mentioned ad naseum some of them. They are starting to go away very slowly(John is especially happy that some of the GI symptoms are subsiding), and the best thing I've noticed is a better sense of well-being most of the day.

I was reading in "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" about animals vs. people. Since I am stuck on the couch right now, I'm going to paraphrase; the narrator is describing the difference between dogs that are wounded and people: If a dog breaks his leg and he has surgery and pins in the bone sticking out afterward, he will still happily chase a cat when he sees it, but a person with the same surgery thinks about the pain in his head. The human imagines the bones crushed, the pins in his leg, the days of pain ahead, etc. And this fretting can be a great part of my day. When my stomach hurts or my legs cramp up, I suffer through the pain, yes, but I am worse for the worrying. The stomach aches torment me with thoughts of hospitalization for Peritonitus (common for my type of dialysis) and a canceled transplant. The severe leg cramps that start with wierd vibrations in my leg (like the warnings of an earthquake) threaten to keep me up throughout the night.

I have recently gotten better about relaxing through all of this. I'm letting the fear and worrying go. Luckily, I've had some practice with insulin overdose throughout the years. (I'm one of the only type I's my age that I know that has never completely lost conscienceness.) Tara Brach says that any worrying about the future compromises today. John Lott himself is a perfect example of living in the moment and envied for this by some. I truly want to stab him sometime when he won't partner with me in my occasional anguish over some business something or other. ( I have argued that worrying equals action...! Safety!....what do you think?)

So I actually feel relief this morning and really good and especially nice: No Worries....well maybe just a sqeeky little voice.