Stop and Go

I feel like life is moving in fast-forward/stop animation. I decided that I am going to start a not for profit organization with two of my best friends, and everything pertaining to that is moving along fairly quickly. But then there are the days that I have to wake up at 3:00 am, and that's when the stop animation kicks in. It's been a year and it seems that when I think that I am getting used to fact that I am on dialysis, that voice in the back of my mind breaks me. What broke me this time? Going to an information session sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation and the transplant center here in Memphis. And try as they might to stress the importance of transplantation, they merely succeed in scaring the hell out of dialysis patients. The have doctors put statistics on an overhead projector giving information about your expected lifespan after so many years after being on dialysis. Yes, it is something that I, as a dialysis patient, must know, but I don't want people to tell me that there is an increased risk of death for each year that I am on dialysis. That frustrates me because there are so many people who are waiting to receive organs, there are not nearly enough donors, and yet, they think that scaring people into the transplant will somehow save people's lives. It's funny because they never tell you how many people actually die as a result of waiting for a transplant...

I know people who have been on dialysis for over ten years and they are still functioning members of society... well some of them anyway. They have beaten some great odds, and continue to do so each day. I would love more than anything to have the strength that they have. My mom tells me everyday that I am one of the strongest people that she knows but I have never felt strong through this entire process... maybe I'll look back on all of this and see the strength in all of this... until then, I'll keep trying to exist in my fast-forward/stop animation realm.