Jeff's Journal

Tuesday’s Potential

Tomorrow is Tuesday. It will be another day in my new routine. I’ll try to get to work by 6:00ish, meet with men’s groups at 6:30 and then try to finish some budgets and then check in to my chair at 10:00 am and get hooked up, but it is a day that has new possibilities.

I do a lot of phone calling while doing dialysis. I do calls until I start the shivering. After about 2.5 hours I cannot help but shiver and listen to the hum in my body. I don’t know if it is electrolytes finding their new balance or that the blood is colder coming back in to my body and it drags my body temperature down and it is just cold. This leaves the last 1.5 hour in the chair to be the longest hours of my week. There is a clock on the wall and I just count down, “One hour, thirty minutes. One hour, twenty-nine minutes. One hour twenty-eight minutes.” and so on. “They” say it will get better.

This Tuesday will be an even longer Tuesday. Tomorrow is the day I get word on about a month’s worth of work. Donor #1 did the final test last Thursday, but the doctors had already departed for the holiday weekend. The docs are gone today for Memorial Day and it will be Tuesday when they get back and read the tests. If the tests come back positive, then donor #1 has a decision to make.

Donor #1 is a bit shy at the moment. He doesn’t want the notoriety. There will be time to give him his due. He is one of my best friends and for the past 15 years we have shared life, but the decision he may have to make is if he really wants to share his life with me in a more profound way than we have ever shared. If this test comes back positive, my good friend needs to decide if he wants to surrender a viable working organ that is essential for his health to me.

He is also a little concerned that there may be a show stopper. The word tomorrow may be that there is something that will prevent the transplant to progress forward. I can see the concern in his eyes and he helps me be centered and cautiously optimistic. I see concern in his eyes for several reasons. One because he may have to pony up a kidney, but also because he has joined my journey. He has watched the symptoms take their toll on my life for the past five years. When needed he provided the right diversions to get my mind off what was going on. He has also helped me see brighter days when all I could see was dark days. He is one of the most intelligent individuals I know and I am not sure if it is logic or love that motivates him.

Tomorrow has potential. I’ll make phone calls, but I’ll wait for just one that will direct the course of my life. If it happens after 2.5 hours in the chair, it will start a whole new countdown with all new types of shivers.

posted by Jeff Waldo @ 5:57 PM