The List

So they put me on the list. Yep I am now officially listed on the Kidney Transplant waiting list. This is a huge step in the direction of getting a kidney transplant and getting a normal life back again. While I am now on the list I am in hold status.  Hold status means that I am technically on the list but there are one or more factors that are keeping me from being transplantable. In my case there are two of these factors. Number one is that I still haven’t met my goal weight. I have 12 to 15 pounds left to loose until I will medically be cleared for surgery. And number two is that I still need to get my dental clearance done.  So while I am on the list now I will not be offered a kidney if one comes available that I am a match for until I am taken off of hold status. I will however be accumulating time on the list. This helps out by giving me seniority if a kidney becomes available that I and another patient are both matches for. At that time whichever patient who has been on the list the longest gets the kidney. So being on the list even if I am on hold is still beneficial.  I also had thought that at this point by being on the list even on hold they would start to test my donors. This is not the case, and we’ll talk about that later.

Let’s talk about my dental clearance first. Having a dental clearance is really important befre transplant because as we all know my immune system will be very weak when I have the transplant so that my body will not reject the new kidney. If I were to have any infections in my teeth while my immune system is at it’s weakest right after transplant surgery the infection could get out of control and being that our teeth are so close to our brain the infection could quite easily travel to my mrain and quite frankly kill me. So being cleared of infection by a Dentist is pretty important in my book. I have made steps to get my clearance but as I’ve said before I do have a tooth that needs to be pulled. I saw an Oral Surgeon last week for a consultation and he told me in order to pull it I need to have had dialysis no longer than 24 hours before the procedure.  He took x-rays and the such to examine the tooth and said that it defiantly needed to come out. His receptionist gave me a quote on the extraction. Including what my insurance will pay for it will cost me Two-Hundred dollars, that’s with sedation which I am a huge fan of so I’ll make the appointment in a week or so when we have the extra money. Once I get that done I should be able to get my dental clearance letter signed off on and have it out of the way.

Secondly my weight is obviously still an issue. I am consistently and true to what the transplant office said they did get me on the transplant list when I showed consistent weight loss. I will be going back to the office next Friday to weigh in again and hopefully will be even closer to my goal weight. I still have to meet my goal weight before they will transplant me. That being said I think I’m on a pretty good path to being there relatively soon.

Okay so lets talk donors. My original thought was that as soon as I got on the list even if I was on hold they would start testing my donors, but that isn’t the case. I sent Susan the transplant nurse an email Friday asking if they would begin testing. Her response in her “I won’t say yes or no” way of answering questions was “we’ll talk about it when you come in to weigh next week”. That means no, not right now. My thought process on the whole thing is this. I am consistently losing weight and am getting pretty close to my goal weight. So why not go ahead and start testing donors so that if there is a transplantable match by the time they have all the testing done and the donor is ready for surgery I will be at goal weight and ready for surgery too and we an get the dang show on the road. I mean I got stuff to do, we have a baby due in June. For me it makes sense to do things like that rather than wait for me to get to goal and the start testing donors which draws out the whole thing even longer. I mean its simple time management here people.  Lose weight while donors are being tested gets us to transplant a lot quicker than lose weight then test donors then transplant, but what do I know. I’m not the expert. I’m not trying to bash anyone or make excuses I just want to get this done as soon as possible as you could probably imagine, and I do understand that the physicians and transplant Team have done this before. They know what they’re doing. I still love you Susan! Ohh and let me mention a new member to the transplant team Adrianne ( I hope I spelled her name right) is the newest member to the group. She works with Susan getting us ready for transplant and I assume she does a lot of other things too like getting the doctors coffee and  holding their place in line at the lunch counter. She seems really super though and even did the leg work of getting me listed on the waiting list even if I am on hold. She’s pretty good so far in my book.

Other that all that not a whole lot is going on right now. The access I had placed in my arm is healing up pretty well although it’s still not ready to be used. I still have the tube catheter in my chest that’s being used for dialysis, and yes it still sucks. I can’t wait to get it taken out so I can just stand under the water in the shower for eeevvvveeeerrrrrr. Oh the thought of a real shower …………

On getting my name placed on the Transplant waiting List. I think it may just be the next best place to have your name besides The Book of Life. Revelation 3:5 

It's Been A Week of Sundays!

I know, I know, It's been forever since my last post, and I really am sorry to leave you guys out of the loop. I mean I got everyone invested the just dropped out for awhile. I guess things were just getting mundane and as I was expecting discouragement were beginning to set in. Like I've said all along this is just one big waiting game and it can be one really long game, but recently things have started to happen which are pretty note worthy, and I figured you guys would like to hear some news. 

First thing is I'm still on dialysis, and yeah I still hate it, no wait I love it. There is a certin love hate relationship there between me and my dialysis treatments that could be a bit hard to wrap your head around. I mean I come to this place three days a week every week without fail. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Tuesday Thursday and Saturday. I leave work early and give up part of my pay check, I come here on Saturday and give up My family time. When I walk through the door here at the clinic though I can't help but think about how beautiful that dialysis machine is, I mean after all this machine is keeping me alilve. That's kind of a hard thing to really think about. This machine which takes so much time away from me is in reality giving me more time. Without my dialysis machine I would be dead in less than a month. I love my dialysis machine, no wait I hate it, no wait....... 

About two weeks ago I had a surgical procedure done to have a permanent dialysis access placed in my arm, it's called and Atereovenus Fistula or also known as an AV Fistula. you can read about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV_fistula. Dr. Grandas who is my Transplant Surgeon did the procedure for me where he went into my left arm just below my elbow ben and made an incision where he then found a vein in my forearm and connected it to an artery. This will allow for a very high amount of blood flow in the vein and allow it to accommodate the high blood flow needed for dialysis. Once it all heals they will remove my temporary catheter that is still in my chest and do my dialysis treatments through the AV Fistula with needles similar to IV needles. That way I won't have any more external hardware (the catheter) that is a high risk for infection, and with the cath gone I will finally be able to take a normal shower. Ohh how I can't wait until I can just stand under the shower water, sometimes it's just the simple things.

I made a stop by the Transplant office a couple of weeks ago for a weigh in. I weighed on their scale at 276lbs which was just under 20lbs from my goal. They told me to loose another 10lbs and they would go ahead and get me listed on the transplant waiting list and start testing my living donors, which they haven't done yet because I was at transplant weight so if there was a match they still had to wait on me to loose the weight. My scale at home and the transplant office's scale weigh the same and last Friday morning when I got on the scale at home it read 269lbs. That means only 4lbs to go. I plan on being on the transplant list by the end of the week. 

That's the gist on what's going on for me now. Everyone is still super supportive and despite all the stress Amanda is still a rock for me right now. She has been doing amazingly lately. I could not do this without her. She does so much at home to pick up the sack for me when I'm feeling crummy and just can't pull my weight, and she does it all while taking care of two year old Robbie and being pregnant. She's Awesome!!

The Daily Grind

So yeah it'seen a day or two since my last update. People have asked where I’ve been. Well I'm still here, still waiting. Not much has changed since last time. I feel like I’m in a waiting game, or if I was a pilot I'd be in what seems like the eternal holding pattern. I'm still waiting to be put on the Transplant waiting list and still trying to lose weight. The scale this morning told me I was thirteen pounds from my goal weight. I knew it wouldn't be easy trying to lose this weight through the Holidays and I was right. It seemed like evry day there was some sort of goodies being brought in by someone or some kind of dinner party to go to, but with the next two days all of that will be over and I can get back in the saddle and hammer out these last few pounds.

Since we've talked last Amanda and I have found out what our baby is going to be. We're having a little girl! I don't think I'll know what to do with a girl. I've got boys pretty much figured out but girls, I have no clue. I guess it'll just fall into place, or at least I hope it will. We told out families about her at Christmas. We got a little pair of pink and white shoes and put them in a Christmas box for our parents and families to open on Christmas. That was a lot of fun. They were all really excited, even my Dad. Amanda's family is especially excited since this will be the first girl born on her mom's side of the family in over 25 years. Girls runneth over in my side of the family. I guess this just means Robbie will get extra attention from his PeePaw.

We did have the doctor check to make sure that there was only one little one in there right now. Unlike our friends Ryan and Lucy Higgins who gave birth to triplets yesterday. WOW! Triplets, I couldn't do that. God has totally blessed them with those children, but really there is no way I could do that. Amanda was playing the “what if” game about it and I told her, "no way God wouldn't do that to me. I mean it's a blessing and Ryan and Lucy are amazing for embracing it but there’s no way I could do that". They also have a two-year old son Carson too. I hope they enjoy every second of it and amazing things happen for them. They are truly wonderful people and we are proud to call them our friends.

We had a good Thanksgiving and Christmas. Getting to see a lot of family and friends was great. I had dialysis on Thanksgiving morning (people gotta get their dialysis) and after that as crummy as I felt we were able to make it to my parents house for lunch and then to see Amanda’s family for dinner. Then on Christmas Eve after dialysis yet again, we made a visit to Her Parent's then with mine on Christmas day. We had a great time, and I had an absolute BLAST when my Uncle Doug and Cousin Jamie brought out their AR-15 assault rifles and we had some major guy bonding time shooting up the hay field next-door.

I'm sure there are things I've left out here and probably new questions you may have about things. Don't hesitate to leave comments or ask questions either here or on my Facebook page. I hope I haven't disappointed everyone too much with my absenteeism lately. I hope through the Holidays you take time to think about the thousands of people out there who have to sacrifice the normal things in life during this time of year because they are in need of an organ transplant and really think about what you could do to change someone’s life by becoming an organ donor. Have you made that choice?

Time On My Hands

  Well it's been awhile since the last update and everyday I keep trying to remnd myself to take some time to post so you guy will know what's been going on lately, but it ust seems like I can't find the time. Then this morning I thought to myself ohh yeah I have all sorts of time to blog. Every three days I'm tied to a recliner for three and a half hours. So I decided to bring the laptop with me to dialysis and blog away. There's no WI-fi here so blogging is about all I can do although it would be nice to be able to watch some Netflix or spend some time on addictinggames.com but I'll take what I can get right now. Don't get me wrong I want to blog while i'm here but three and a half hous is a long time to just sit and I'll be honest there's no way I think I could set and type that long. I feel sorry for tose people who set and type for a living. I'd go crazy doing that.

   So let me get everyone brought up to speed. A little over two weeks ago I had my dialysis catheter put in my left chest. Since then I have started living on dialysis. I say living on because without it I would be on my last leg by now. So I can't sit here and tell you that dialysis is a totally terrible thing becausre init own way it is also a blessing. Thousands of people everyday are kept alive because of the dialysis machme, and I can add myself to that list. Dialysis has become my new blessing and curse.

   I have continued to work and am really glad that I am able to. There are a lot of people that are on dialysis who aren't able to work and I feel lucky that I can even if a forty hour week isn't possible because of my dialysis schedule. I go to dialysis three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for three and a half hours a time from 12:00 PM to 3:30 PM. The schedule works out pretty well because I can go to work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday which I work 10 hours a day then on Tuesday and Thursday I can work until 11:15 Am. This gives me the ability to work about 37 hours a week. At first I wasn't sure if I would actually physically be able to work with dialysis because I remembered the last time I was on dialysis after the daily treatments I would be super tired and really not able to function the rest of the day and some of the next. It seemed like as soon as I started to recover it would be time to have dialysis again. Back then I had an early morning dialysis schedule from 7:30 AM to 11:30 AM so when I felt bad afterward my day was shot. This time since I do it later in the day when I get done I go home and lounge for a couple of hours then when I really start feeling the effects it's later in the evening around 7:00 PM or so and we're getting wound down anyway so I usually got to bed early when Robbie does and just sleep it off. By the morning I feel great. So the schedule is kind of working to my benefit. The only thing I don't like is that I have to go on Saturday because I'm losing that time with Amanda and Robbie, but I know it will pay off in the long run and by going on Saturday it gives me the opportunity to work three days a week instead of just two if I did dialysis Mon, Wed, and Fri which helps me somewhat provide for my family which is really important for me.

   So what happens at dialysis? I'll give you a little walk through. I usually get to the linic fifteen minutes early so I can be actually hooked to the machine right on time. When I get here I go into a waaiting room and ….. yep, wait. The nurse will come get me and take me back where the dialysis happens. It's a big room divided in half by a big nurses station and a counter. On either side of the counter in the room there is another smaller nurses station, surrounding those stations are a series of medical recliner chairs that line each outside wall. Beside each chair is a dialysis machine. When I walk in I go up to the main Nurses station counter there in the floor is a big panel that is a weighing scale. I empty my pockets and take off my jacket then step on the scale. It reads in Kilograms. It is used to weigh patients coming in and out of dialysis to measure the liquid weight they have gained between treatments and had removed during treatments. One of the nurses writes my weight on a little slip of paper and I gather my things and walk over to my assigned chair. When I get there I give my paper slip to another nurse who will be in charge of getting me set up on the machine first takes my blood pressure both standing and sitting then she takes my temperature. Once that's done she has me sit and begins the process of getting me hooked up. Since my access is in my chest I have had to create a whole new wardrobe of sleeveless shirts so I can pull it back for them to get to the access tubes hanging down. She gives me a surgical mask to put on while she puts one on too in order to protect me from any germs in we mat have while she takes the dressing bandage off of the access tube where it enters my skin. Once she takes the dressing off of it she cleans all around it with these things that are like flat Q-tips soaked in alcohol, it feels so freaking good!! I feel like a dog getting scratched behind the ears when they clean that access. It's not dirty, it's just another way to prevent infection, but for me it itches sometimes and obviously I can't scratch it so when they rub it with those cleaning stick it feels awesome that she puts a dressing over it and then connects a syringe to the end of each of the two tube ends. Once she gets them connected she pulls the Heparin fluid out of the tubes into the syringe. She takes those syringes off and throws them way with the Heparin in then. Next she puts two more syringes on the tubs, but these syringes are full of saline solution She pushes the saline into the tubs and my body then pulls back on the syringe plunger pulling out this time blood. She pushes and pulls the plunger a couple of times on each tube to make sure it it flowing properly and that no blood clots have formed in the tubes. After that she connects a tube from the dialysis machine to each tube of my access and tapes the tubes to the chair I’m sitting in so that they don't fall and tug on my chest. The tubs she has attached me to are the two ends of one tube it runs from me to the dialysis machine, through a pumping device that makes the blood move through it, through an artificial “kidney” and then back to me. Once I’m attached she sets the program on the machine to remove a set amount of fluid waste from my body in a set amount of time. She turns it on and I watch the clear fluid that the tube is filled with slowly turn red as it is pulling out my blood and running it through the machine then back into my body.

Here's one of the actual machines at my clinic. The artificial kidney is on the right side between the red and blue hose fitting, and the pump is right in the middle with the hose wraping around it.

   Once the machine is turned on I have to raise the foot rest of the recliner to help my blood pressure from getting too low and to keep my blood pooled on a level plane so that no fluid settles in ly lower legs and isn't removed. There now isn't really much for me to do but wait for the next three and a half hours. Each patient has a TV to watch and you can bring a book or whatever you want to do as long as it doesn't involve getting out of the chair or standing up. Most people take a blanket and try to sleep so the time passes quicker. I can't do that, it's hard for me to sleep here and besides it's the middle of the day, who wants to sleep for four hours in the middle of the day? I know, I know, you're saying “I would love to nap four hours a day”. Well I'll tell you it's ok for the first couple of days but it gets old and then you can't sleep at night because you're taking four hour naps. I usually just watch tv or read. Ohh yeah I just got reminded. The whole time you're in the chair they leave an automatic blood pressure cuff on you arm so every fifteen minutes it squeezes the crap outta your arm which makes for an annoying nap.

   Another thing is your dry weight. Your dry weight is the weight you weigh when you have no excess fluid on you. That is the weight they are trying to get you to when you leave. That's why they weigh you. So if you come in and weigh 50kg and your dry weight is 47kg then you have 3kg of excess fluid on your body, and that's what they'll set the machine to take off of you. Now if they try to take too much fluid off of you then it's like rapidly dehydrating you, and everyone knows what happens to your muscles when they get dehydrated, they cramp. Holy cow do they cramp. It's usually just your legs and feet, but remember your legs are in the recliner and you can't put them down or stand up which is just what you want to do when you get a leg cramp. Usually the cure is for the nurse to have the machine to replace the extra fluid it took with saline which rehydrate your muscles. Your dry weight at dialysis is right on the line of cramps and no cramps, so cramps are a pretty common occurrence.

   Once your treatment is over and it's time to come off of the machine and go home the nurse will shut down the dialysis machine and unhook the tube that is drawing blood out of your access. Then she will let the machine run again pumping all the blood that is still out in the tube back into you by the end of the tube that is still attached to the one that lets blood back in. Once all your blood is back in you where it belongs I might add. They have you stand up and take you blood pressure again. If it's normal and you feel ok they pack up any stuff you may have brought with you and send you back over to the scale to weigh. You should now be back at your dry weight and you're ready to go home, but don't forget you gotta be back in two days to do it all again. Everyday except Christmas.

   A statistic I read last week said that every two hours a person dies waiting on a Kidney transplant. What an amazing number of lives lost that could just as easily be saved by normal people. You don't have to be special to donate an organ. You don't have to be wealthy, or a certin race or ethnicity. You don't even have to know the person who needs an organ. All you have to do is give and when you give you're giving so much more than just an organ to someone. You're giving life, and hope. You're also giving that person a chance. A chance for another day at the park with therir children. Another Trip to see the ocean with her husband, another chance to ride his bike with his friends, another Thanksgiving with those who their thankful for, another Christmas morning with the family they cherish, and another day to enjoy this gift we are all given. The gift of life.

Dr. Willem Kolff

  The hardest part of writing this blog sometimes is thinking of that catchy opening line to write. It's not coming to me this morning. I guess because I'm still recovering from the past two days in the hospital. It has been a rather eventful few day for me as I went to have my dialysis access put in on Monday morning. Things went pretty well as far as the procedure part, as for me I was totally freaked out about it. All I could think about were the times in the past before my first transplant when I had accesses put in. I had four of them within six months and each one had some type of complication. One even caused me to get a deadly blood infection where I ended up with a picc line for daily I.V. injections for a month. I was also worried about having an I.V. put in. This may seem silly for me to be worried about a little i.v. needle after everything else that I’ve been through but ever since dialysis the first time my veins have gotten pretty small and hard to find so iv.'s usually involve a lot of poking and digging for me. Luckily I have a vein on my right arm that in the past year has decided to get really big and visiable so other than bleeding like a "stuck pig" when the nurse put it in the I.V. went really smoothly.

  Anyway, getting back on track. Amanda and I got to UT Hospital at about five till seven Monday morning and went to get registered at the patient registration area. While I was getting registered I heard another patient come in behind me and sit down waiting on the clerk who was registering me. Almost immediately I heard this familiar voice start quizzing the guy on why he was there and what he was having done. Was some one coming with him? Was he a smoker? yeah you guessed it, it was my mom asking him all those questions. It made me laugh a little how she just strikes up a personal conversation in the oddest situations. She had come to be with us for the day and we were glad she came.

  They got me back to the waiting area and immediately offered me that cozy complementary flashy gown which I was told to put on and get in the bed. After i was changed and in bed the nurse Tracie came in and started getting me prepped for the procedure. I do have to note that the quality of nurses at UT Hospital has very much improved in the last ten years. Well she got me all situated and got my I.v. in, drew some blood and did all the necessary paperwork then said the usual "they'll be ready for you in a little bit". When she left I started getting pretty anxious. It was then I decided to lay it all out for the Doctor when he came in. A few minutes later Dr. Grandas came in to see me. He went over the procedure and set my expectations for the day. As he was about to leave I stopped him and told him all about my anxiety. How horrible of an experience all of this was for me the last time I went through it and how I had been up all night before worried about what I would go through this time. He was really honest with me and made me feel really comfortable about things. Hew said that he understood that last time was really bad for me and that he understood the level of stress I was going through. He said he would be sure that I was asleep before he started the procedure so that I wouldn't remember any of it.

  A little while later the anesthesiologist came to see me to ask the normal round of questions. Do i smoke? Am I diabetic? Do I have a heart condition? Stuff like that. I also told him about my anxiety, and he said "well I can give you something for that right now if you want me to". Ohh yes I wanted him to and he did and things get kinda foggy after that. I remember them telling me that I had to take off my watch and wedding bad before I went back but can't remember taking either of them off. I do remember going in the Procedure Room and seeing the green circular light in the ceiling. I remember the anesthesia nurse introducing herself to me though I don't remember her name. Then I remember beginning to kind of panic again and her telling me that things were ok and to just breathe. She told me she was going to give me some medicine in my I.V. to calm me down then they would get ready to sedated me. That's the last thing I remember.

  The next memory I have of the morning is waking up in the recovery room. I did a quick mental scan of my body to see what if anything hurt. Right off I noticed that my neck was really sore and my chest had a slight sting on the left side, but more that that I could feel that my nose felt like it was on FIRE!!!! I reached to touch it and the recovery nurses grabbed my hand away. She told me that when they sedated me I began to snore so they had to put a breathing tube down my nose. Apparently I had a stuffy nose and the tube wouldn't go down one side and they had a hard time getting it down the other so I guess it scraped up the inside of my nose and made it belled then made it burn like crazy when I woke up.

  Everything went well though in getting the dialysis catheter inserted in my chest. They were planning on putting in in the right side but it ended up in the left. They kept me in recovery for awhile then moved me up to a room. I think it was about 11:30 A.M. but I don't know for sure. A little while later they took me to the dialysis area for a treatment. I did dialysis for two hours on Monday. They kept me in the Hospital overnight and on Tuesday they did dialysis for another three hours.

  On Tuesday I got a visit from the Social worker from the Dialysis clinic. She went over some information about the clinic itself and told me the schedule that I will be st up on. so on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday from 12:30 to 4:30 I will be at dialysis which will leave me availabe to work three days a week and maybe mornings on Tues. and Thurs. before going to dialysis if all goes well. As for now I'm at home taking it easy for a couple of days of my access to heal and my range of motion in my neck to mprove from the soreness. Then it's back to the grind, life goes on. I've still got a super energetic two year old and an awesome wife to take care of.

  Incase you're wondering Dr. Willem Kolff invented the first dialysis machine.

  Ohh Yeah What has two thumbs and needs a Kidney??? This Guy!!!!

  Here's a picture and diagram of my dialysis catheter.



Just Roll With It

I spent this morning thinking about what the doctor might tell me at my appointment. Could things have gotten better? Had they gotten worse? One thing I’ve learned from 11 years of medical issues is that if you're not careful worry and anxiety will take root in you and cause more trouble than your illness ever would. So I did what I always do, I prayed. I didn't pray for one thing or another. For God to save me from all this mess and make me miraculously healthy. I prayed for Gods plan to be fulfilled in me and if that involved dialysis and another transplant then that's what it'd be, but I knew whatever it was the reason would all come out in the end. After praying I felt better and was back to the same old me. If you know me then you know I'm just an easy going laid back guy. I try to roll with the punches, because alot of the time changing the outcome is beyond us and so all that's left to do is dwell on the worry and anxiety and who really wants to deal with all that anyway.
I made it to my 10:30 appointment this morning right on time at 10;40 (I like to be fashionably late sometimes). It was really because I couldn't find a parking space. But I made it none the less. After signing in and the customary waiting room time the nurse came to get me. She took me back and weighed me like they always do and I noticed that I'd gained six pounds over the weekend. Hmmm I thought wonder what's up with that. After she got me settled into a exam room she took my blood pressure which was normal and said Dr. Suresh will be in in a minute. I said "OK" and started playing with one of the plastic 3-D kidney models in the room. Taking it apart and looking inside at all of the parts I was amazed at how many different things are in our kidneys and how detailed the Creator was when he designed us. It’s really amazing, the inner workings of the kidney. Then I heard a knock on the door, It was Dr. Suresh before I knew it he was in the room saying hello, loud, like as if I was deaf. I guess he deals with quite a few older people who are hard of hearing. He immediately told me that my blood work yesterday morning didn't look very well at all. My creatinine has gone from 4.86 on Friday to 8.3 yesterday morning which is a huge spike in such a short time. He told me that I need to go on dialysis. Those were not the words I was hoping for, but in the same thought I was expecting it.

He said that I will need to have a dialysis access put in soon and start treatments right after. I was impressed that he did ask me what I thought and what I wanted to do. My response was whatever needed to be done as soon as it needed to be done.I mean what was I gonna say? Naa, Doc I think I’ll just ride it out and see what happens? Umm no. So he called up Dr, Grandas to see when he would be able to put the access in. They decided since they both are taking Thursday and Friday off that he would do it first thing Monday morning.

We talked a little longer and I asked at what point could I do dialysis at home so that I could still work and function as a dad and not so much a dialysis patient. He said to do it at home I would need a permanent access surgically place in my are, and that he didn't want to do that right away. He wants me to do dialysis at a clinic with a temporary access in the hope that I find a living donor soon and can be transplanted, but that if after several weeks if no donor has stepped up then we would talk about a permanent access and home dialysis. I would really like to find that donor.

After the appointment I went out to my truck and called Amanda who wasn't able to go to the appointment with me to tell her the news. She was very supportive and understanding of the decisions and choices the Doc an I had settled on. Then I called my mom and filled her in She too was very supportive and as always offered to step in as "Amanda's Back-up" to go with me to Doctor visits anytime she's needed. I thinks she's ust an ambulance chaser if you ask me, bless her heart. After I called Amanda and Mom I made what was the hardest phone call of the day. I called my Dad. I told him what had happened and been said. He was quiet on the phone and I know that he was upset about the whole thought as was I. I told him thast we made it through this once before and we'd do it again and again if we needed to. I really felt bad talking all this over with him though. In some way I feel like even though I couldn't do anything about it I let him down in some way by this kidney not lasting longer, and I sense in some way he eels like he let me down by it not working longer. It’s that strange bond between a organ donor and a recipient, and a Father and Son.

At this point I'm just waiting until Monday to have the access put in. I will be in the hospital for the day maybe two. Then placed on a regular dialysis schedule until hopefully a transplant becomes available. Life is odd like that sometimes. Just yesterday I was planning this years hunting trips and looking forward to spending time out in the woods with the guys and the Holidays with my family now today I'm trying to figure out how to go to dialysis and keep my job and wondering if I'll be sitting in a dialysis clinic on those Holidays, but if you know me then you know I’m up for whatever it takes. I'll just keep rolling with the punches and climbing those mountains.

Buckle Your Seatbelt

It's been one week since my last blog update. Originally I wanted to blog a lot more often, but lately it seems like so much is happening that once a week is what has ended up happening. For those of you out there that live for the next update and sit by your computers waiting I apologize, really I do, sure. Well If you read the last update you know that our local new station came out and did an interview for a story about us. That aired last Monday on a show here called Live at Five at Four here's a link to the stor and video AnotherTransplant interview. I was pleased with how it turned out. Of course they didn't use half of the footage they taped, but they did go back in their archives and pull out some old video from where they did a story on me from my first transplant. You'll see that they talked quite a bit about the blog and I hope that it brings more readers to the site. The response we've been getting is tremendous and I have enjoyed hearing from everyone who saw it and had words of encouragement for me. I also m super grateful to all of you who linked it on your facebook pages. It is awesome to see just how many people are following us here. When I look at the blog on my side I can only see the people who follow on the blog-spot site. I can't see how many of you follow through email, but I know it's way more than just the sixteen or so who follow through blog-spot. Thank you all for sharing this with us.
Like I said a lot has been happening in the last week. I guess the first thing to talk about is that if you haven't already discovered by reading previous posts I am a follower of Christ. He is my God and Creator. The one who gave his life for mine so that I may be held clean in his sight. I have an amazing relationship with Him, and I know He wants to have a relationship with you too. Having said that I also believe that God has a plan for all of us and when I look at my life I can see where his plan has been laid out in front of me and I never noticed it. Times when I thought nothing good could have came He was able to shine through and be seen through all of the fog of confusion, fear, and hurt. Then there have been times when his plan was laid at my feet more noticeable than the red carpet at the Oscars. So I know for a fact everything that happens in my life and yours was put in place for a greater cause. Being a Christ Follower I also believe the Bible. Every word of it. Without the Bible my faith has nothing to stand on. It makes or breaks the existence of God. God tells us through the Bible that he will never put more of a burden on us than we can carry, but that doesn't mean we can't lean on Him when things get heavy. So apparently God has decided that Amanda, Robbie and I won't be making this part of the journey in our lives alone. We are having a baby! We found out two Thursdays ago after taking what seemed like ten pregnancy test. We took the Pink one, the Blue one, the digital one, the talking one, we took them all and One after the other continued to tell us what we already knew. We're pregnant!! We are extremely excited and can't wait to dive head first again into parenthood. Robbie is excited to be a big brother even though he has no clue what we're talking about. And since you're wondering, it's a boy!! (we don't officially know yet) but it's a boy!!!

The next development that came up this past week is not so exciting. Probably around the first of last week I started feeling a little weird, just not right. I started having some random nausea. At first it was just short bouts and then it started getting more prevalent so on Friday I decided to give Dr. Suresh's office a call and see if I could go by the lab at lunch time and have some lab work done just to check and see how things are going. They said that would be fine and asked if I could swing by the office for a short visit on my way to the lab which I said I could. I stopped by the office and met with Dr. Suresh and we talked a little about my treatment. He told me that with my last round of lab work he was not expecting me to be having any trouble for about a year, but to get the blood work done just to check things out. So I went on down to the lab where i had the blood drawn then went back to work. At about 4PM the Doctor's office called me and said that my lab work didn't look good at all. My creatinine had risen from 4.5 the last vist a month ago to 7.68 then. That's a really big jump in a short period. The amount of creatinine in a normal male's system is about 1.1. Creatinine is a toxin that you kidneys filter out so the higher the level in you blood the less of a ob your Kidneys are doing of filtering it out. The Doctor's office asked me to do a 24hr urine collection on Sunday and bring it back to the lab this morning (Monday). So I dropped it off today and tomorrow morning I have an appointment with Dr. Suresh to find out the results of the 24hr urine test and the other lab work that was done today. At this point I'm not really sure what to think. You know me I’m pretty laid back most of the time but this seems like dialysis just got real close real fast.

On a side note my friend Steve Farmer has invited me to every single UT home football game this season and I've had to turn him down each time. I was planning on going this past Saturday to see them play Georgia but had to cancel when I started feeling sick again and heard the news from the Doctor on Friday. He says he'll keep inviting me so hopefully I’ll get to go before the season’s over. Maybe you can score us a Sky Box Steve.

It seems like things are becoming a lot more real and I hope that I am ready to carry this burden. I think this song says a lot of what I need right now.