Life is the hospital is all about routine – one that starts at 5:00AM. Each morning the nurse would wake me to get my vital signs, weight and draw blood. The next activity was a visit by the transplant residents. They would ask how I was doing, check my incision,…
October 1st Will be a Very Special Day Indeed
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…
Chronic Illness and Scaling Back
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…
Cankles & Other Exciting Things
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…
Practicing What I Preach: A Health Update
I am now in kidney failure. I found out last Thursday, the same day Chronic Resilience was officially released. Life is wonderfully ironic. It is weird to type that word. Failure. It doesn’t feel like failure; it feels like my kidney worked really hard for more than 34 years and…
Health Update and Coping with Not Great News
Phillip and I were back for my 3 month checkup yesterday. I completed blood work on Tuesday and felt calm about where I was at. I’ve had some fatigue, but nothing dramatic. Life was moving along as life does so I assumed my kidney was following suit. During my January…