A hello to anyone here for the first time. While my entries are reflecting on my life on dialysis waiting for a transplant, the key term being my life, which is busy, full, and rewarding. Yesterday i worked the morning at the Groundlevel coffeehouse (7-11), did housework, ran 4 miles, biked 8 miles, and did the dinner, homework, bath, bedtime stuff with our kids. It never slows down! Yesterday was easier, certainly, because it was not a dialysis day, which takes time and energy from all else. Today is one of those days, but I am working right now, will then go to dialysis, tonight I will do at least a 3 mile run. I do not know how, and find it very difficult to slow down, even when my health is not the best and I find myself in the hospital or being treated for some issue, or just plain worn out from the dialysis process. 

I have reflected on how my life will change when I get a transplant, and it is hard to conceptualize. I guess that what will certainly change is the inconvenience factor. Last night I went to a meeting at my daughter's school for a trip to Europe she wants to do next summer. Looking at the presentation with the amazing photos of the places on the iterinary made me reflect on how nice it would be to travel freely without always having dialysis units lined up in advance, and just the freedom to move around without that yoke. However, I am extremeley grateful for it keeping me alive, and thriving for the choices I can make and do live out daily.

A transplant will only be a different form of what I am and do now. I still could, as my Dad used to say, be hit by a pie wagon at any time. We all have restrictions upon us. That is the special nature of being human. The perception and reality for us of our own suffering. The question has become perhaps more acute to me, being on this special form of machine life support. But to accept is to allow it not to suffer from it.