Monday
El Milagro: I am just barely awake here at 5:55 am, waiting in the truck until 6 cause I’d rather wait out here in the parking lot than in the weighting room. I listen to the end of a news item on Marketplace, and grab my bag and enter. I weigh in at 76.1 and wander in to the room. Everyone looks way too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to me. Rosie the Tech nods and smiles and I just give her a blank stare, it seems. I can't really tell how my demeanor strikes others as I am only 1/4 here. I get the chair in the corner this morning, and some little tech fairy has left three chocolate cookies and one strawberry filled wafer cookie.
I just want to sleep and my brain says, "Nice cookies... good... let's sleep" Margaret the Nurse comes to set my machine up in her businessy, no muss no fuss, way. She listens to me and reports that she hears some fluid in my lower back. Oh great! I don’t know what to say, so I just mumble about cedar allergies. Jackie the Tech comes over and sticks me quickly and before I know it, I am leaning my chair way back, putting on my head phones for radio, pulling my hat down over my eyes, and closing them to the quietude of the interior of my head. Ah yes. Sleep. About 8 I wake up and look around. The place is still hopping and I look around observing it all move by. I notice that Jackie is looking at my machine and that my BP cuff is just now relaxing. Jackie has a frown and asks me how I feel. Well… “I feel like I’m just waking up… and, I’m warmish… and… did I say I just woke up?” She replies, “Well, your BP is 93 over 68… Margaret, she tosses over her shoulder, ...his BP is down so I’m turning him off, okay?”
My wandering brain turns to my TV, which is announcing the news from a psychiatrist about why people break their New Year’s resolutions: “It takes 21 days to wire in a new habit.” He goes on to tell how to actually change habits, reporting that we should choose a small change we can handle and then find a habit we want to replace it with and then practice the new habit, to create new chemistry in the brain. Well, Duh! My blood pressure is now down to 80 over 43, so this guy is not getting me excited at all. Jackie says, “don’t go back to sleep”, and I think, “Darn! I want to just close my eyes and drift off into dreamland.” They decide to give me 200 ml of saline and keep my machine from pulling more weight off. So I end up the session getting saline and my BP finally comes up to 115 over 72 at the end. I am done, but I wonder how useful today's session is. Oh well. This is the last session of the year and I ponder that as I am holding my stick holes. Ponder Ponder.
Then Red haired John bounces in the door (picture Tigger) and wants to switch vehicles so he can take junk from his mom’s garage to the dump. He dashes out again, Jack
ie and I compare 23 year olds, and I continue to ponder the end of this year. I come out of my pondering with a sense that it was a difficult year adjusting to dialysis while working full time and having a family. Liz says that this next year we’ll get a kidney… so, I think that is a good idea. I am ready to move beyond dialysis. So it goes on this last day of 2007. Notes: In at 76.1 and out at 74.7 kgs.
* Photo is of sunset @ I-35 S., Moody, TX Exit.
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2 comments:
Jack,
Lucky you being on M/W/F dialysis. I was on T/R/S, and that was not fun. I had to go on Thanksgiving (though I missed Christmas and New Year's, which was nice). And, I never understood how everyone just skipped on holidays ... very strange.
Good to hear that you are still doing well. Good luck on finding that perfect donor in 2008!
Actually, Nathan, I'm on a TTS schedule and only had a Wednesday cause of the holidays. TTS is better for me since I still work full time. I leave work early on TT for a 4 pm start time and on Saturdays I am usually able to negotiate an "early" time with my center, and try to go in to watch sports on ESPN, which I don't have at home.
We too, at our center, have a number of folks who 'skip' and according to the techs, it is because they don't like being there and they figure that skipping won't kill them. I think the social workers should work more intensely with them about their behavior.
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