Saturday
Morning: Shayna and I go to the soccer fields to have her team pictures made and wait around until the game with the Starlettes. The Kick Kats beat them 7 or 8 to nothing and Shayna goes home with the coach’s daughter so she can make the next game with the Rainbow Sharks at 2. Shayna played forward for the second half, took a number of shots, and made two assists but no goals. DARN! I counsel her: "You played 100% today, and when you throw in from the sidelines, ALWAYS throw down the line!" The coach’s daughter made her first goal ever… and it was called back cause she was off-sides. DARN II!
El Milagro: I walk in with a plate of 36 jam-filled cinnamon butter cookies* that Shayna and I made last night. They are your regular cut out cookies that we cut in the shape of bats and pumpkins at first, but then switched to triangles and diamonds to save batter. "Jam-filled", even though in the title of the recipe, is a misnomer. They actually just have a small dollop of black rasberrry jam on top. These are my contribution to the ‘cookie day’ PAC activity for this month. I see that my fellow PAC member, Germaine has brought over 100 little Halloween cupcakes with black frosting and orange M&M’s on top. My cookies will make a nice, less sugary choice along with her cupcakes.
I place my cookies on the corner of the nurse’s station by the front door and make my way to my chair, today on the back wall in the middle of the room.
Carol the Tech pokes me today and Jo the Nurse checks my heart and ankles. Jo asks my weight: “How much did you weigh?”
“75 even”
“How much you want to take off? 3.9?”
“Oh no! I had cramps last time. Let’s take me down to 73.”
Carol finishes hooking me up and adjusts the machine while Jo documents our plan on the computer. I begin to watch football: Texas Tech and Colorado, with Tech losing to the Buffalo’s ("sorry Michael"). That is surprising to me… I didn’t know Colorado had it in them to beat Tech at home.
Then comes the big game: UT and Nebraska. The REASON I come to dialysis. By half time we are down, 7 to 3 and we have played a lousy first half and Nebraska is playing like they have nothing to loose… and, they do have nothing to loose and everything to gain, since they’ve lost their last four games and they have been playing like their famous ‘black-shirt defense’ has become a ghost of the past. Today the ghost decides to blitz on practically every play and it is working to upset McCoy and the Texas boys. The black shirts are back and are playing rough and wild and UT looks like they have a broomstick up their… they’re very stiff and stilted. At half time I’m depressed, but still able to use a Halloween metaphor in my last sentence!
Carol the Tech puts the cup cakes and my cookies on a little rolling table and glides around the place serving the patients the snacks. I'm thinking that folks like this little snack service and that it is a good thing the PAC is doing.
So, the second half needs to be better and it does get better by the fourth quarter! By the end of the third quarter UT is still down, 17 to 9. All of us at the center who are wat
ching the game are quietly waiting for UT wake up. I count 5 other TV’s channeled to the game. It is Jamaal Charles who comes to show us what he can really do besides fumble the ball. In the 4th quarter Charles runs for 216 yards and 3 TD’s and puts us ahead, 28 to 18! By the final gun we are winners; 28 to 25 and I let out a “WHEW”. My BP was up to 150 / 75 at one point during the 3rd quarter... by the end it is down to 116 / 68. What a game! As Gladys the Tech unhooks me she asks for the cookie recipe and comments that she and Phyllis the
Nurse both like my cookies very much. I didn’t tell her that in the final review we figured out we left out one ingredient (lemon juice)… and they still turned out tasty. As I weigh out at about 6:30 I recognize that we are getting into the Fall** and it is already almost dark and chilly. The seasons, they are a changing, and I’m suddenly aware that now dialysis is part of my seasonal life and I come and go from this place as the seasons come and go from the calendar. I wonder if this thought is part of my acceptance of this dialysis in my life or if it is just another thought running thru my head. “Hmmm.”
Notes: In at 75.0 and out at 73.0 kgs.
* Jam-filled cinnamon butter cookies. Retrieved online October 2007 from the Kidney Foundation of Canada's website, http://www.kidney.ab.ca/kitchen/recipes/jam_cinnamon_butter_cookies.html
** Leaves pic by Golda, retrieved online October 2007 from http://www.thelensflare.com/u_golda.php
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1 comment:
Hey Jack!
I figure that after some time has passed, as well as a couple more seasons, you will know if it is "acceptance" or simply a "thought running" through your
head.....
Your Cheryl
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