Back in the spring of 2011, I was having lunch with a friend and discussing my intention to write Chronic Resilience: 10 Sanity-Saving Strategies for Women Coping with the Stress of Illness. She asked me, “Do you really want to be known as ‘the chronic illness girl’?” At the time,…
I promise this is the last play-by-play post of my transplant. I wanted to get the experience written down so that I’ll have it. That also means this post is a long one. Thanks for reading along. Our first week at home after being discharged from the hospital was relatively,…
I stood up for the first time at 4:15AM the morning after the transplant. It look a lot of heavy lifting on the part of my nurse, but he got me upright and on the scale to weight myself. This was followed by promptly easing back into bed and shutting…
Just joining me? Catch up with Kidney Transplant: Part 1 and Part 2. The first thing I remember after waking up from surgery in recovery was feeling a heavy tightness on my lower left abdomen and the immense relief that came from knowing the surgery actually happened and that I…
My kidney transplant date is set and it is just a little more than a week away on October 1st! My donor? Well, that is my gorgeous, generous, loving, amazing husband Phillip! And now I’m crying… I am a huge puddle of gratitude for the way all of this is…
The time came last week for me to begin temporarily scaling back. This is the most important thing you can do to preserve and honor your health when you’re hitting a rough patch or going through a flare-up. This is also the hardest thing for driven, goal oriented individuals like…
I met a woman a few months ago who’d had knee replacement surgery. She said that she tried everything under the sun to avoid surgery – all of the woo-woo and not-so-woo-woo stuff. She finally relented to the operation when she could not longer walk. Before she spoke they showed…
Have you ever had a grouping of words strike you so profoundly that you almost need to pull your car over when you hear them? Fortunately, I was pulling into a parking spot when they came over the radio, or I would have done just that. I was listening to…
Illness requires us to let go of a lot of things. I sometimes think it’s a spiritual quest toward non-attachment. Priorities become clearer as we need to clear our plates to allow for healing. I had to let go of two things today. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow where…
The cankles have arrived! It’s lovely to watch your ankle expand during the day to eventually swallow any definition you previously had between your calves and feet. The one lesson this has taught me is that strappy sandals are not a good choice at this point in my care. We…