367) Flag Day 2009

June 14, 2009
Sunday

...been meaning to post for at least five days now... and the more I get back into my pre-dialysis life, the more I seem to live life rather than write it. So, a brief catchup for all you who care or follow this as a survivor's log of a transplant recipient. It's Sunday and Liz and Shayna are up at Camp Kachina, checking Shayna and the Awesome Foursome into a cabin for a week of blistering heat and camp activities in the scrubbiest camp I've ever seen... that's another story... So, quick run through of a busy week.

Tuesday: Lab work... went smoothly and I am getting used to having to be checked in to the hospital every time... going thru the signatures, warnings, assignments of insurance, wrist banding, etc., and then visiting with Ms. Peggy as she pokes me and I give a sample of my precious bodily fluids and set them in a box hole in the wall. There is something very weird about that whole process. I pee and Peggy is on the other side of the flimsy wall with a rectangular hole cut through it... only two aluminum doors separating us... I can hear her and she me... I could just stand up from the lab chair and pee right there for all the privacy the whole thing affords. It's kinda like being married to Peggy... like I say... weird.

Pee talk and pee observation and pee collecting is such an important part of any kidney difficulties so folks ought to get used to it or forget participating in kidney treatments of any kind. Makes me remember adolescence and my friend, Anita, who has disappeared from my circle, and maybe from existence... although I hope not. We used to talk pee plenty back in the old days.

Tuesday evening Bernadette calls with her now usual "all things excellent" calls... and, without even any confusing questions. She reports my creatinine is 1.2, which is good.


Wednesday I leave the house at 6 am and spend the next couple hours listening to Morning Edition as I drive my rental Pontiac G6 out into the hill country chasing the dark to Fredricksburg on auto-pilot, drinking my coffee and munching on a few breakfast tacos. I decide to turn left and head down the hill to K-ville and then punch it on I-10 west where the speed limit is now 80. I am driving to Alpine to do a workshop for the Texas Council of Family Violence's Criminal Justice System Response Training back thru the hill country and then over the Edward's Plateau to the place where you can take a sharp left and drive right down thru a wide valley, south and then right up through the foothills to Alpine... a drive that reminds me of my west Texas homeland, and thinking about two simultaneous topics; Craig Childs' Secret Knowledge of Water and a new way to introduce my crisis intervention workshop to my audience. I am envisioning an expansion of a continuum of crises along a curve [like the landscapes out here that seem to stretch from side to side rather than vertically] from common situational and developmental crises [the vertical view], based on the many labels people use... a landscape of phobias, PSTD's, suppressions, dissociations, denials, psychoses, and catatonias. Then I plan to bring the participants back
again to the idea that all crises can be worked from the process of identifying the lethality, finding the known and forgotten coping strategies and assisting the person to their coping before jumping to the work of resolution. These ideas are formulating in my brain as memories of Childs' descriptions of Indians mapping the secret water holes throughout the desert... and simmer in my visualized Permian Basin of surrounding mountains, and the flatland between them zoom by my G6. I drive down thru that wide valley to Alpine, watching my gas gauge go down too, thru empty to the flashing notice... "Get Gas Now!" and that takes my focus as I cruise into town.

Two hours of workshop, visiting with new friends, and I drive out of there, feeling like it went okay, given it is my first outing post Mordechai's entrance into my life... and decide to drive on to Marfa and out that way... through Marathon, past the Glass Mountains --->
and back up to the speed ribbon called I-10 East... running from the sun to the darkness of HWY 290 and then through the hill country, watching for deer and drunks... making it home by 11:30 pm. What a drive.

Wednesday: Back to the budding crisis at work... budget losses and all the staff anxiety and adjustments we must make to continue our work with our network members, and preparing for an upcoming Board meeting on Friday.

I, however, continue to count my lucky stars, taking care of myself so I can take care of others.

By Saturday Lizzie and I are ready for a date ---> going out to Thomas & Gails' Sycamore Creek venue to hear Jonathan Byrd, where we see friends (Marty, Katie, & Mitch) and bask in the breeze of a warmish evening, enjoying the music and being together in the hills northwest of Dripping Springs... the highlight being running into Joy and connecting on FB later. So, we are all really fortunate to be on the planet! As LMF said, "Life is full and beautiful. Celebrate life with your friends everyday. After they are no longer it is too late."