345) In Gratitude to El Milagro Dialysis Center

March 17, 2009
Tuesday

Morning: I am getting even faster with my moring regimen of peeing, weighing, checking blood glucose, before our first lab appointment at 7:00 am over at S. Austin Med Center... where we check in and wait about 2 minutes b4 Brianna calls us in the enter us into their system. Then it is no time at all to walk around the corner to the Lab where Peggy is waiting for us in the Express Lab, where we wait for about 3 minutes until she takes my blood and pee and we're outa there very efficiently. Peggy says transplant people get express service cause they don't want us hanging around waiting with all the sick people you find in hospitals... makes sense to me. At home I am eating some graham crackers to put something in my stomach before..., taking Meds @ 8:00 am, and lastly, documenting the night and morning tasks in my Patient's Manual.

One thing about blogging every day, which I'm not used to, is keeping notes all thru the day... so today I concentrating on just the important stuff that occurs to keep this from becoming one more boring blog!

So some of the things of note today include getting busy thanking El Milagro Staff and Patients for all their care and support and true friendship over the last three years. Yeah: you know it was only three years there; from April, 2006 thru March, 2009. Not too long in the annals of patients in life-alysis... yet I will always remember the experience and the devoted people who have taken on working there for a career. They are truly dedicated to keeping people alive and on the planet and there is no way we could ever really thank them for their commitment. So I am thinking, aside from the Cookie Surprise on St. Pat's Day? Hum... well I could dedicate Mordichai's middle name to them... YES... from now on the "Miracle" in Mordichai the Miracle Kidney is in honor of El Milagro (the Miracle in Spanish)! And I can draw a picture of Mordichai and put some things for patients to remember (like Bernadette's advice that patients on the waiting list learn all they can about 'transplant' B4 they get their "call"). Of note, my neighbor Marie's mom was treated at El Milagro and she fondly remembers Herman the Nurse and James the Nurse. Her brother is now in dialysis at Herman the Adminstrator's S. Austin Dialysis Center. Small world, huh?

(<---) So, I spend some time making the pictured poster for them, while Lizzie makes the dialysis-friendly green snicker-doodles for staff and patients.

Today I am dealing with my precious bodily fluid on an average of every 28 minutes (between 8:10 & 1:50) on the outgo and 600 ml on the intake side)... ah yes... my precious bodily fluids...

Liz goes out to buy some more supplies for a cleaner house; now that we have to have a CLEAN environment beyond any of our abilities we must count on paper towels, anti-bacterial soaps, new dish drainer and paper towel holders for all the bathrooms. One good thing, we can claim these as medical expenses.

Liz nicened up the cookie tray with green tissue paper, filled it with the green cookies and took them and the poster over to El Milagro where she met with Susan the Administrator, Rosie the Tech, and Ann the Nurse to put the cookies out and hang up the poster. She reports that they all miss me as much as I miss them.

At 7:00 Bernadette calls to check in and tell Liz I can take one less Neural (3-1=2). She also clarifies the procedures for tomorrow's "clinic". I am delighted about taking less meds already: my brain hallucinates that I must be getting better if I can take less meds... right? Correcto mi hypothesizo.

Somehow don't have time to pay bills in all this day...tomorrow it is a HIGH priority!
We end the day by watching HELP, which Liz hasn't seen in decades, I haven't seen in years, and Shayna hasn't seen in weeks. Just another day at the salt mines. As Billy Pilgrim would say, "So it goes."