January 8, 2008
Tuesday
El Milagro: Today is my first day back at work from vacation and as I sit here at the dialysis center I am thinking that it was weird being back at work today after two weeks off. I had just really gotten used to being at home and then I have to go back to work. But being here has a sense of stability… it never changes… I come here whether I am working or on vacation. There is no vacation from dialysis. At least at this point in my life. As I look around at the familiar scene with a sense of eerie comfort Amanda the Tech walks over smiling and I say, “Are you going to poke me?” and she replies, “Is that okay with you?I” and I say, “of course…”. She goes about the poking procedure with more confidence than last time and yet she is still very gentle and cautious. I give her positive feedback afterwards. She has stuck me so well that I find I can move my arm around quite a bit without ringing the machine’s bells.
Dr. Rowder, Jennifer the Dietician, and one of the nurses come by for their perfunctory “visit” and I report on my vacationary pistachio usage as if I were a probationer reporting drug use before it shows up on my ‘UA’. Jennifer warns that pistachios are really full of potassium and phosphorous and salt! Well, that’s why they are addictive, I guess. In addition to pistachios over the holiday I also ate some chocolate chip cookies, potato latkes, egg nog, and fancy cheeses. These holidays are killers for the kidney diet. As I was partaking of these delicacies I was telling myself “All things in moderation, my boy”, even though moderation is really too much when we are talking potassium or phosphorous. It’s now over and I am still alive, so back to the grind of the kidney-friendly diet.
Tonight on the news they are wondering about how all the candidates will do in New Hampshire… and I am getting tired of the early primaries already. I’m sure this blog will be a forum for my jeremiad at some point, so I’ll ‘back off’ now.
I listen to ATC, watch the ABC news, and then click around and finish watching a series of shows about the universe*: “Alien Planets”, and “Alien Moons”. From the mundane considerations of the regularity of dialysis to the expansive irregularity of the moons of the solar system… as Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, “It’s always something”.
Notes: In at 76.9 and out at 74.8 kgs.
*The Universe, retrieved online from http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=54036
2 comments:
Jack -
My vice over the holidays was fruit cake. I have to have a HICKORY FARMS dark fruit cake. Sometime my wife has to make a special trip to the mall to fetch one. She doesn't eat fruit cake so I have a chunk every few days until after New Years.
"Jeremiad" was a wonderful word! It exactly desrcibes my reaction to the primaries and the news media in general. All the rhetoric has clubbed me into passivity. All these years the mantra was "if you don't like what's on TV, change the channel." So I changed the channel to something other than news!
Jack, I celebrated 29 years of survival from kidney disease on January 9th. I have my original fistula and it still functions. I have led a limited 'normal' life but in my opinion my limitations were no greater than those of the people I meet. I won't climb Everest or swim the English Channel or bicycle across America and I am fine with that because I have no aspirations to do so. I can work. I can go home every night to my wife. I can sit up and take nurishment, as the old saw goes.
I wish you the same success with your kidney disease that I have enjoyed.
regards, Mel
Thanks for the feedback Mel. Your comments are exactly the kinds of stories I'd like other readers of this blog to send in. JN
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