Month: September 2016

the world


edDSC_4762The world is a blend of beauty and horror. paradise with a savage twist. The horror has two parts. Nature adds earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, tsunamis and forest fires. The rest is the gift of mankind. The challenge of life is to face this two-faced Garden of Eden.

successful kidney transplant feedback on social media


On September 13 2016 I received a donor kidney and it is wolrking well.   Flickr, 12 year user and active Facebook, longtime active user Instagram, recent joiner active posting curren T and ol…

Source: successful kidney transplant feedback on social media

smoothing and settling


tough day yesterday but thru we got. Today I feel stronger by the hour. All the new wrinkles, daily domestic stuff all smoothing into easier routine. Ten days since kidney transplant.

 

What I have learned is how well we had smoothed ou the life of dialysis. Very very smooth.

bladder retraining


with kidney failure your first goal, a constant fight, is to lower your amount of fluid intake. In the two weeks before the call for transplant my daily fluid intake netted me zero urine production, down from a very modest urine output. In hospital a catheter was inserted for about five days. My new kidney began working immediately upon completion of surgery. The retraining of the bladder is simply teaching a dry stiff nonflexible bladder to recall the sensation of a fully urine loaded bla dder. In a short time bladder control should be reestablished. Not painful especially just odd sensation, back pressure esp. with the cathethter was peculiar.  An essential urine check is creatinin level, on dialysis mine was up to 1200′ then more like 700-800, now down to about 170. Not every kidney works so well after transplant but mine has, I am fortunate. other transplants take a little more time to ramp up production, almost all do.

my forest primeval, revised


from my deck. Tons of shade. Thank God we gave over the job of raking leaves to our handy dandy lawn care and snow blowing troops. I have thought I should pay extra attention to my favourite, everyday spots. My family bought this property in 1969. It was an untouched waterfront, forested drainage lot. My parents chose to cut all the trees growing in the centre of the property. We kept the perimeter trees for the most part. We planted three small trees across the lakefront edge. Two maples flank an oak. I think of them sometimes as honourary siblings. They are now mature and very tall. I helped my mother rake to level and shape the drainage contour of the fill added to the lot. Contour to avoid pooling water from rain. My back and hands recall the painful effort of our annual raking blitz. Painful because I am an old office worker ot a steady outdoor worker. Blitz because we had to wait for the last leaves fall and try to work around the rainstorms of autumn. Tricky work and to make it trickier to fit it into weekends. I know this property. It knows me and has felt my touch.

image

the loneliness of the antique crank


imageI shot this with the iPad. It’s more a convenient image grabber than a “real” camera. But sometimes I like the speed it gives me. Shoot and post in seconds. None of my more serious cameras has wifi. Its all about my mood and how much effort I am willing to push into the equation.

This morning an article in the New York Times about the new perception of loneliness and seniors as a health problem.

I found it fascinating that they are starting to indentify physical  effects of loneliness. They’re just starting to understand the brain chemistry involved. But they are also aware of the physical effects. Stress hormone is released. Blood pressure is elevated.  It was more interesting was the efforts to cataract this feeling. They have set up telephone lines for people to call in to have a chat. Sometimes they don’t directly address their feelings of loneliness they just want to talk. another feature that has been developed something called men’s shed at which men gathered to talk drink tea and I suppose and work on woodworking projects. A place for oldguys to hang out. No need for advanced carpentry skills.

I was moved to submit a comment in the article and NYTIMES accepted it.

This shed sounded like a good idea.  I am more interested today in rethinking the options I have available nearby.  camera club, seniors centre with its activities, Georgian college course either online or in person, and continuing my blogging efforts with a possible strategy to use them to ge t me more connected.

The laughing 600lb gorilla in the room is the avalanche if change my kidney transplant will bring much of it good beyong measure. I will lose what I call my dialysis “villa ge. The patients and nurses with whom I chat. Small conversations but still nuggets of connection.  Three days a week.

It is up to me fight loneliness. There are many  weapons available.

PS Part of the text of this post I added by  using the dictation function of the iPad tablet and its builtin microphone. It misunderstands me some of the time but does a great job generally.