Before and After

I promised earlier that I would share the differences my life has been since the transplant. The list is long so I'll try and keep it rather brief and hit the highlights. First, I no longer have to see the fear in my children's eyes of the possibility of growing up without a mom. Second, energy levels! I have alot more energy now but I do tend to over estimate what I can do and end up wiped out by the afternoon. The doctors assure me this is due to doing too much too soon. Waking up from the transplant surgery, I was immediately struck with thoughts of how can I give back to the community? How I can I live the life I now have that will bring honor and glory not only to God but to the family who so willingly donated the kidney? In Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks dying speech admonishing Private Ryan to live a life worthy of what it cost to bring him safely home has always been a personal mantra if you will to me. Only to me it's Jesus saying it to me. Now it took on additional meaning to me. For weeks I mulled it over and over of what I could do to give back and nothing was coming. Then one day our homeschool group had a field trip where the SARTEC K-9 group came and gave a demonstration. This group is an all volunteer group who help the various agencies in looking for lost children, Alzheimer's patients and also cadaver searches. THIS WAS IT!!! This was what I felt God tell me to do. I went to K, who along with her husband, Ed, are in charge of the team. My question was "How do I volunteer?" and her response "Do you have a dog and what kind?". Her eyes lit up when it became known that we had 2 Olde English Bulldogges. She instructed me to give her a call later and we would talk. The next day I called and let her know up front about my medical situation to which she replied, "I don't see a problem, about half the team are EMT's". She then gave me her son's telephone number since he was the one in charge of training the dogs. We hung up and about 10 minutes she called back and said that she had talked to the EMT's on the team and none of them had an issue with me coming on the team. YES! Couple of days later Andy, the trainer of the team called and we set up a time when he could come by and evaluate the dogs, me and Bruce's thoughts of me being on the team. The day came and the dogs did well and we continued our discussions over lunch with Andy. His assessment was that Sneakers had the energy and the inclination to do live rescues or air scents but thought Reccee might be more suited for cadaver searches. Mother's Day the whole family attended our first practise but without our dogs. The kids and Bruce got to hide and have the dogs on the team find them. Meanwhile I got to tag along with the handlers while trying to manuever through the woods with my broken foot. Four hours later as we were driving home Bruce commented that if anyone had told him a couple years ago that I would want to spend Mother's Day in the woods, he would have said they were crazy. I have dealt with the effects of the kidney disease for so long that I had forgotten what I use to enjoy. Hiking on the Appalacian Trail was a common thing for me to do with friends. Canoeing on the Cumberland River was another enjoyment that had slipped into the recesses of my memories. This past Sunday we got to bring our dogs for the first time and see how they would do. We decided that I would be Sneakers' handler while Bruce would run Reccee in the event he ever decided to join the team also. Sneakers certainly enjoyed the freedom of being off leash in the woods! He enjoyed it a little too much. I labeled him my ADHD dog when it came time to "find" the person. He did run straight up the path the person took and stopped when he lost track of the scent. The person had made a right turn into the woods at that point so he turned to come back to me but got distracted by who knows what. Since I am also in the learning stage, I didn't know how to instruct him to go back and "find". He actually did that on his own and zeroed right in on the "lost" person. When it came time for him to come and tell me he had "found" a person, well that was when the ADHD kicked in. After a short time we got him focused again and he led me to where his "find" was. Whew! Reccee on the other hand on her first run, trotted up the path with head toward the ground moving it from side to side. Where the person stepped off the path, so did Reccee and she went into the brush where the person was hiding. Unfortunately, Reccee has problems with allergies and the outside so I don't think she has the physical constitution for search and rescue. Sneakers has the physical constitution and only time will tell if he can hone in on his focusing skills. Most importantly, the transplant team gave their blessings with me doing this as long as there would be no sky diving!