I've Gotten Another Call!

Tonight I received another call for a possible kidney. Bruce and I are preparing to take off. After I get in my room at the hospital, they will draw blood and then a series of tests will be performed on my blood and the donor's blood. This takes about 10 hours and the outcome of these tests determines whether or not this kidney will work for me. Stay tuned, it may be awhile before I can post again if all goes well.

Theme Song

Music has always played a very big part in mine and my husband's lives. Besides Stryper and Petra ( I know, I'm dating myself) Third Day was my all time favorite until recently. Casting Crowns has reached Third Day's level with me. This song was sung in our church service when the Katrina victims came to town and has resurfaced on the radio lately and really speaks to me at this stage in my life.

Praise You In This Storm - Casting Crowns

I was sure by now
That You would have reached down
And wiped our tears away
Stepped in and saved the day
But once again, I say "Amen", and it's still raining

As the thunder rolls
I barely hear Your whisper through the rain
"I'm with you"
And as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away

I'll praise You in this storm
And I will lift my hands
For You are who you are
No matter where I am
Every tear I've cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I'll praise You in this storm

I remember when
I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry
You raised me up again
My strength is almost gone
How can I carry on
If I can't find You

As the thunder rolls
I barely hear Your whisper through the rain
"I'm with you"
And as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away

I lift my eyes unto the hills
Where does my help come from
My help comes from the Lord
The Maker of Heaven and Earth

Some Milestones

Yesterday was the first time I was allowed to shower instead of a sponge bath. Boy did that feel good! The euphoria over being able to wash my hair carried over to when I had to change my bandaging. I did it without even thinking about what I was doing! It seems it's becoming second nature to me now. The order in which I have to wash my hands to make sure they're clean (palms, backs, nails, cuticlea, thumb, fingers, wrists, backs and palms), setting out the supplies first, ripping some tape off to have it ready, oh and I have to put on a surgical mask also. Seems a little extreme doesn't it? But this prepares you for when you start to uncap your catheter. A new cap must be put on each time you take one off. The head of the Dialysis Center called yesterday and postponed my start of training until Tuesday. That gives me one extra day of maybe a phone call coming in :) Someone recently told me that another person said they couldn't pray for me because they would be praying for someone to die. After my initial shock of actually being told this, I explained that I would never advocate praying for someone to die just so I could get a kidney. My prayer has always been that God would find a match out of the people who had died and make it happen. The number of people who are actually organ donors is pretty low. Some family members have a hard time with giving the OK to use their loved one's organs in their time of grief. Who can't understand that? The first thing our family does when these phone calls have come in is pray for the family who has lost a loved one. Our hearts go out to the unknown family members who are grieving. We pray for peace and comfort to them and that they feel the presence of God's love surrounding them. I can honestly say my thoughts are more with that family than with my situation at that time. My mind can't even grasp that thought of God making that person die so I could get their kidney. It breaks my heart that some people can attribute such actions to our Heavenly Father. Free will decisions of drinking while driving, or taking pills and then driving or even speeding contribute to the opportunity of death. Often times innocent people are affected by another's free will choice.

Reality Check #2

Yesterday was my weekly visit to the Dialysis Center. Usually there aren't any other patients in the waiting area and I don't wait very long before being led back to the treatment area. Yesterday was very different. A woman came in and signed the log in sheet. She appeared to be younger than myself and I felt brave enough to start a conversation with her. I asked how long she had been doing PD (peritoneal dialysis) and she said since March. She then went on to tell me how rough life was for her at the moment. A single mother of a teenage boy and girl, a boyfriend who was cheating on her and she was in the process of stalking him and taking pictures with her cell phone. Trying to veer the conversation away from her boyfriend situation, I asked if she had ever done hemodialysis. She told me they had operated to put the access in for hemo but that it had closed up the day after surgery and PD was the only option available to her. When I asked her if she was on the transplant list, her reply shocked me. She said she was tired of dealing with life and her situation and she wanted to just stop the PD and let nature take it's course and that she had told the doctors she didn't want to go on the list. WOW. After getting her catheter inserted she ran away for 6 months until the doctors finally caught up with her. And here I thought I was bad at putting my head in the sand! My heart broke as she told me that everyday she asks God why He is mad at her. I reassured her that God was not mad at her and had not brought this on her. She wasn't ready to hear that and went up to the receptionist to recount the latest on the boyfriend situation. The comment was made she was gonna get locked up for doing something stupid eventually about this guy. By this time, I'm thinking "Please God, get me back in the treatment area and don't let me be here if she decides to bring a gun!" Her normal appointments are every Thursday and I questioned her why she came every week. Her response again surprised me. She said she doesn't do it right so she had to come weekly. My first thought was, WHY? I don't know what she meant by she wasn't doing it right but surely after almost a year that could've been worked out. When they called me back, my mind was so full of the conversation and hopelessness of her that I walked in without a moment's hesitation, got weighed and sat in my treatment chair and looked up. Caddy corner from me was a person on hemodialysis. The nurses that surrounded that and one other hemodialysis patient were decked out in lab coats that reached the ground and clear plastic visors that remind me of welder masks. At this point my head started to spin but then my nurse, Sandra came in and shut the curtain. I knew God was showing me through all of this of just how good I have it. Never has it come to my mind to ask God why me? I know that in the Garden of Eden when sin entered the world, a dominoe effect was started of things breaking down. Being involved in the charismatic church for awhile was always interesting. I can't tell you how many times I was told that I either didn't have enough faith to be healed or I had sin in my life preventing me from being healed. It didn't seem to matter that I had been healed of some of the effects of diabetes like blindness being the most dramatic. Realization started to set in with me that miracles sometimes come instantenously but sometimes they come over time. I dealt with the blindness for about a year and at one point needed surgery because of my retina starting to detach. What happens with diabetics is that over time they develope new blood vessels in their retinas but they are very weak. These vessels start to leak a fluid before they hemmorage. Laser treatments are given to help sear the new vessels into not hemmoraging. Both of my eyes continously hemmoraged for about 9 months. Eventually the blood will become reabsorbed into the macula but poses the threat of pooling to the point where the weight of the blood detaches your retina. I had gotten to that point and surgery was scheduled. A partner at the law firm I worked at had taken an interest in my situation. He wanted me to get a second opinion before I went ahead with the surgery. Little did I know that he had scheduled this second opinion with the world's greatest eye surgeon who had operated on Sugar Ray Leonard and the head of the U.S.S.R. at the time. Before this second opinion appointment my attitude was one of God you can just take this away from me. The surgery would be performed while I was awake and they would insert a needle into each of my eyes and suction out the blood. Need I say more after the needle part? That was enough to have me kicking and screaming at the thought. Somewhere along the way I realized that God worked miracles through medical science too. That it was no less miraculous to be healed based on knowledge that doctors had. That ultimately God had given that knowledge whether they admitted to it or not. A peace came over me as I realized this and I was ready to go into that operation. It was at that time I had my miraculous, instant healing. When I showed up for my second opinion appointment with copies of all the tests that had been done previously, the team of doctors looked at the records and agreed that surgery was needed but wanted to see how things had progressed since the last set of tests. They dialated my eyes and put on what I call their head gear with a bright light and a hand held super magnifier and they began to look. Medical terminology started flowing excitedly out of these men and I didn't understand a word. But there was an excitement in the air. Finally after 3 doctors looked and conferred they told me that my eyes no longer resembled what the previous tests were showing. My retina was attached with no signs of tearing and the blood was being reabsorbed at an enormous rate. No surgery was needed. Praise God! I still see a retina specialist every year and each time come away with the news that new vessels are no longer growing in my eyes and the specialist doesn't believe I'll have any more issues. Feeling sorry for myself is rarely an issue that I have to deal with. Today I was again reminded of just how blessed I am even if I do have to do dialysis. With God all things are possible.

A Lesson Not Yet Learned

Geez I feel really stupid. Yesterday I wrote about learning to accept people's help. This morning I was in a situation that really did need assistance and I STILL turned it down. Bruce and the kids had gone to my youngest son, Samuel's, gymnastics meet in Georgia last night. I woke up later than usual this morning and was sitting down watching the dog training video. My blood sugar dropped so low that I became very disoriented. When this happens, my brain knows that I need to get sugar but the ability to actually do it is greatly impaired. My vision gets pretty disjointed and it sort of morphs things. I managed to stumble to the refrigerator but couldn't recognize what it was I needed to eat. There was an Arby's bag with half of sub in it and the Arby's hat finally registered in my incoherent mind (I'm thinking Arby's commercial brings new meaning to me now). I grabbed the bag and stumbled to the table and ate what was left of the sub. Still being confused I went back to the refrigerator and tried to find something with sugar. The bottle of Hershey's syrup caught my eye and I was relieved to see we had milk so I emptied what was left of the syrup into a glass of milk. Let me say that I have never truly liked chocolate milk but at this point it wasn't a matter of what I liked or didn't. The phone rang and I answered it. It was my friend who owns Butterbean who was to come for a visit later today calling to say she wasn't feeling well. She picked up immediately that something was terribly wrong with me and offered to come over. I of course refused her help. She questioned me about what was going on and I tried to tell her as best as I could in my condition but I reassured her I was getting better and drinking chocolate milk as we spoke. She told me she was either going to come over or call 911. Well the threat of the 911 call caused me to drink the milk faster but I still didn't want her to come over and help. She told me to hang up the phone, continue eating and call her back in 20 minutes and if I didn't, the ambulance would be called. Threat of an ambulance cut through the fog in my mind and helped to bring me around even more. I called her back to make sure she didn't call 911 and she said that I sounded better but I was still slurring my speech. Why didn't I accept her help of coming over? We kept talking and apparently as we talked she could tell I was improving. At one point she offered to have food sent over and of course I refused again (When am I gonna learn?!?) After one of these insulin shock episodes, 2 things happen. One is that during it the sweat that pours off me literally soaks my clothes and I start shiverring because my body temp has also dropped low. That is part of the body's reaction to shock. The other thing that happens is that I get very sleepy. So my wise friend says "I've been craving Steak Out when do you want it delivered now or later after you've taken a nap?" The issue of not accepting help was hitting me at that moment and I finally agreed to her help. She told me to take a nap and she would order Steak Out for both of us when I woke up. Thank God for people like her who care enough not to take no for an answer and are more stubborn than myself.

I Did It!

Last night I changed my bandaging. Bruce stood behind me to help keep me steady while my head was spinning. But I did it! There was apparently no fresh bleeding from the handling of the dogs. We did our homework assignment with them and invited our friends Bassett Hound, Aden to come over for a visit. Now Aden is the sweetest, mild mannered dog I've ever met. He can become a little nervous at times but it shows up as him wanting more affection/attention. His worst times ever are with thunder storms and yes, we had some thunder towards the end of the visit. Our friend Preston who owns Aden was amazed at the difference in our dog's attitudes. Yes, we did have corrections to make but for the most part they laid on their beds while Aden had free roam of the house. Add in 3 war whooping boys to the mix and there were plenty of distractions to tempt the dogs. Sneakers seemed most tempted by the sound of the boys having a grand old time without him, but eventually he settled in with an occasional attempt of pushing his boundaries. After almost 3 hours of "visiting" our dogs had reached their max and needed their crates to just chill and sleep and not be required to do anything. The next test is having an enery filled English Bulldog named Butterbean come over tomorrow night. This will be a challenge because Sneakers LOVES to romp around our backyard with Butterbean. Reccee has not met Butterbean and she seems a bit protective of Sneakers. Last night with Aden was the first time we had another dog besides Esox and Moses in our house. Her hair raised up at first sight of Aden and she was anxious to get to him but didn't.
Training is looming faster and I keep hoping maybe that call will come and training not be needed. With each of the last 2 calls, I had appointments scheduled within 2 days on the first call and 9 days the second. My next scheduled appointment with the kidney doctor is Feb 21 and I keep wondering on whether I'll get the call close to then. When I didn't receive the first kidney everytime the phone rang my heart would skip a beat thinking this was it. After 6 weeks of it not being it and realizing that I was becoming depressed, I made myself think of things other than my health. Praise God I haven't had that issue with the 2nd call. I guess part of that was that I got the emotional dump of emotions when I was turned down. People who interact with our family have offered help in many ways and I always say that I might take them up on their offers. It's hard for me to ask for help though. Part of it is because I don't know what's down the road and that I don't want to wear out people's generosity and kindness at this stage. But truth be told, I don't know when I would. The plan at the moment is for one or both of my sisters to come here and stay with the kids while I'm having the transplant. After being released from the hospital I will go into what they call the Townhouse where I'll need someone with me 24/7 for about 3 weeks depending on my progress. In my mind, that's when the help will be needed. The Lord is dealing with me on accepting people's help and showing me that the bottom line of the issue is pride. OUCH! I've never thought of myself as being a prideful person but I actually had pride in NOT being a prideful person. Circular logic eh?