When I first started this blog I suspected that I would only be maintaining it for a short period of time. Somehow I imagined that I would find and receive a new kidney in just a few months. Here it is five months later and I'm really not any closer than I was back in April. There have been a few people who have been eliminated from consideration since then and there currently always seems to be someone in the process of being considered as the donor and I could hear good news any day... but you can't spend your days waiting for that phone to ring... it would drive you crazy every time it didn't.
When dialysis started up in late May it was a new and interesting experience. Sometimes scary... but generally painless and there was entertainment in the form of a television/computer screen. When I started dialysis it was via the catheter in my chest. Eventually they switched me over to the fistula, but that hasn't been without issues. I've had to switch back to the catheter twice during recovery periods for issues I've had.
So much for generally painless... now that I use the fistula I have to endure the sting of two needles each dialysis session and on occasion... like last night... one of the needles wasn't flowing right so they added a third needle. Ouch. It's not fun being a human pin cushion.
The novelty of dialysis is wearing off. Computer solitaire and reruns of Friends or Seinfeld gets old real fast. I wonder how people do this for years. I wonder how many years it takes before you just want to give up.
The good news... I'm getting this catheter out on Tuesday. I'll need to wait 48 hours after that before I can take a real shower... but to know that a real shower is less than a week away... and that a swim in the ocean is possibly just around the corner... well its the small things that keep me going.
My name is Bil... and I have kidney disease
