Day to Day Life and Dialysis

The blog of a 26 year-old dialysis and liver patient in Memphis, Tennessee giving a day to day (or week to week... or whenever she feels like telling you) recount of the ups and downs of life at the moment.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The transplant list...

Well, I am unoficially on the list. I have one more test to take before they can make it official, so I guess it will become official next Tuesday. I got the call from the transplant clinic and my stomach dropped. It is one of the calls that I had been dreading. It's one thing to go through the testing, but its another to tell the world that you are ready to have someone else's organ transplanted into an already ailing body. After having the testing put on hold for approximately nine months, I have become almost complacent about this entire situation. But this event has made the process that much more real. I will, essentially, be walking around with a part of another human being in my body. It is awe inspiring on one hand, on the other its scary as hell because that person either had to die before I can receive the organ, or it will be from someone close to me. I can't imagine looking at the person for the remainder (however long or short) of our lives and feeling guilty because I am basically taking the "gift" from him/her. And what if that person needs a kidney later in life, what if the kidney that person gave me fails? Will he/she blame me? Will I blame myself? What if I have to go through all of this and the kidney doesn't work? That would break me and I know it! That is the one thing I cannot deal with, going through all of this and the kidney doesn't function properly. Dialysis is hell, but I know what to expect and I know how to manage it... at least to a certain extent. But my life is stagnate and that is the one thing that I cannot stand! I am a fairly well educated young woman, but dialysis makes having a full time job hard because many employers won't work with the schedule that I have. The transplant offers me the freedom that I once had, and Lord knows how much I long for that! And it will also extend my life... (still debating on whether or not that's a pro or con) and give me the opportunity to go chasing after my dreams again. But it's a risk... Now I have to figure out whether or not I am that much of a risk taker to go through with it....

Friday, August 11, 2006

My first dialysis experience

I can't remember ever having visited the dialysis center my grandfather attended. Until March of last year I had never known what exactly dialysis was. And I was somewhat content with that. It didn't affect me, so I really didn't care...

This morning, on my way to dialysis, the driver picked up another woman who attends the first dialysis center that I ever visited. I remember walking into the unassuming building, and thinking it wouldn't be so bad. The building was two stories with white washed brick and a huge loading dock where patients came and went. I ascended the ramp and walked into the building behind a patient going in for a treatment session. As soon as I crossed the threshold, a smell of old ammonia mixed with the smell of sewage and unwashed bodies. The air knocked me back and I choked. I covered my mouth and looked at the man who had walked in before me. He was heading to the back of the cafeteria like waiting room towards a second door. Tears welled up in my eyes and my heart sank. There was no way in hell I could come to a place like this three days a week. My emotions took over for a moment, as I watched the empty space which the older black man had filled. His presence still lingered in the doorway. I quickly reigned in my emotions and followed the path the man had taken. I walked through a second door at the other side of the room, and found myself in a small corridor like area. To my left was a second door with a coded lock on it. There was a small note in the lower right corner of glass window of the door. To my right was a stairwell. I looked towards the remnants of the footsteps on the stairwell. My eyes began to burn again, and I choked against the bile rising in my throat. A figure appeared in the window to my left. I wiped my face a little, and forced a quick smile on my face. The woman was tall, with her blonde hair pulled up into a messy bun. She opened the door and I introduced myself. She told me that she had been expecting me and a few others, and that the kidney education class would begin in a few minutes.

I was the only person that showed up that day. I sat in a small waiting area for an hour watching various videos on renal failure and dialysis. I sat in that room with that smell of ammonia and decay. I felt like the smell seeped into my clothing, into my pores. When I walked out of the center into the bright afternoon air, nothing greeted me but that smell. It lingered in the recesses of my nose. I smelled for the rest of the day. Did all dialysis centers smell like that? Did they all look like the disheveled, unkempt array of chairs and tables that I had seen in the cafeteria/waiting area? I watched as people began to emerge from the recesses of the building as I walked down the ramp. My vision blurred as I walked back to my car. I tried to open the door, but my key missed the lock. I tried again and fumbled with the lock some more. Finally, I got the door open and plopped into the seat. I sat there for a long time and let the tears burn my cheeks and stain my face. I looked at the building again. There was no way in hell I'd be able to do this if the center I went to looked and smelled like this one. It had broken me and I had only been there for about an hour. There was no way I would be able to survive four hour visits, three days a week. It just was not possible.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Darkness is prevailing

I have seen more doctor's and hospitals than I hav cared to over the past couple of weeks. For the normal person that may be a good thing... my transplant work-up is on schedule and people in my family are deciding who will get tested. All of these things should be great news, but all I want to do is find some hole to crawl into, to block out the world, to figure out how I am supposed to handle all of this! The transplant will save my life, and give me the freedom that I had before I began dialysis. I will, hopefully, be more healthy than I am now, have more energy, be more like the person that I used to be. But do I really want to go back to being that person? The past year and a half has changed me more than all of the phases of growth, development, and learning that I had experienced in the 24 short years that I have been on the planet. (I was 24 when I was diagnosed with kidney failure). I know that I must somehow reconcile the pre-renal failure person with the person I have become. For most people that would not be a difficult thing to do, but that requires a lot of time and energy. Time I have, but energy I lack. I would rather work on starting a business than work on myself. I know its because I have concrete ideas to work with, there are things that I can look and determine whether they are good, bad, will help or hurt others, but when it comes to one's self it is hard to see, with clarity, what makes us who we are. Maybe I am afraid of knowing what makes me me... maybe I am just lazy... who knows. I only know that it is something that I do not want to deal with at the moment. In the meantime, i will focus all of my energy on creating something out of this ordeal that I was somehow thrust into. It requires a lot of thinking that doesn't involve thinking about myself outside of the realm of a renal patient! One day I'll be bathed in light and I won't run away from it!