340) World Kidney Day

March 12, 2009
Thursday

NAMC: Up at 5:30 am and blood sugar elevated (see Notes). Lizzie and I are talking mid morning and she comments on my increased ability to sound like a real person in my conversation and I reply, "Yes. Today it is more Jack and less Whack" . We're discussing whether I can stay by myself for awhile while Liz checks in at work... I think I can keep my eye on things while she is gone, plus Rabbi Kerry is coming to visit and maybe it'll be while Liz goes to work. New team is Eric the Big Guy Nurse and Martha the Tech... Eric says he cannot understand the night shift and their ways. Stuart called and we conversed for sometime about sickness ("I'm still afraid, Jack, about being out there and catching something"), and diet; Stuart is on a special diet he and Cari have found... can't remember the name, and we talked briefly about my working at Kerrville Folk Festival this year. I told him it didn't look good at this point... mostly cause of being around people who may be sick or because of the general bacterial conditions out at the ranch.

Later on Cheryl came out to give Liz hugs and brought me cheery get-well balloons. Cheryl comments frequently on this blog as "your Cheryl" and she is one of Liz's five "girlfriends" since they all were in the Graduate School of Social Work at UT many years ago.

Rosanna the Diabetics Nurse comes to talk all about diabetes and since my blood sugar is on the high side she brought me a finger pricker as a gift! It is a cute little Bayer Contour Blood Glucose Monitoring System in its own pouch holding all the supplies. She shows me how to use it and tells me the story of diabetes, diet, etc. Very Nice Woman. She suggests I check my blood glucose on an un-scheduled agenda, whenever... just to get an idea of how it fluctuates. When Rosanna leaves.  We have a little afternoon quiet time, and then . . .

Grace and Lawrence come to visit. Good news: I love these people! Bad news: we get to laughing so hard that I have to hold my incision to keep from splitting it open. Then we laugh about that and I say, "Keep it up... laughing is good medicine..." They leave just before we all plan for an Italian food fiesta (since I haven't made my famous [actually my mom's] for over 10 years now cause with the deteriorating kidney I couldn't eat tomato sauce... potassium you know...) and Gracie makes a killer Lasagna. We can hardly wait but there needs to be some miles between here and there... Gracie is going to LA and I think Lawrence had some plans tambien.

Later in the afternoon my dad calls and he is reading the blog and very interested in everything thats happening up here.
<--- Talking to Dad on the phone]

Night: Had an okay kidney incision / kidney functioning night... but my penis and scrotum is giving me some pain... the scrotum is really swollen and it is burning right before I pee. Really no fun at all! Liz says I shouldn't include this in the blog so you can just imagine that there were several different hypotheses about what was going on and in the end Hahn was proud that she was the nurse who hit the nail on the head... it was what she thought it was and I was able to cure myself with her strategy. I am forever indebted to Hahn the Vietnamese Nurse.

Notes: Vitals for the day ~ BP 146/76; Oxy=97; Blood Sugar=200; Creatinine 1.4; Farts = 4 (a good thing pre-bowel movement).

For another guy's transplant report from a few years ago, see Nathan's PKD Blog's report on his transplant.