Category Life

What Faux Fall Flora Wrought

Michael 6 Comments

We are almost half way through September which means if you haven’t yet, you soon are going to be too late to buy any of the good Halloween decorations. I was thinking about this last weekend when I was taking stock of my meager faux fall flora for my coffee table and front door. I like fall. I like the colors. I like the calmness that seems to fall upon fall mornings. But except for fun size candy bars, I’m not so much into Halloween.

Apparently I didn’t get the memo. Last year Americans spent over $9 million on Halloween decorations. Right around 9,100,000 dollars according to The Balance e-zine. They went on to say that is because it’s an economical holiday and people “are willing to spend money on something if it provides a lot of value. Halloween does that.” I guess they didn’t see the $14 hairy spider at Big Lots. Or maybe they did and their idea of value is different from mine.

FauxFallFloraIf you crunch some numbers and divide this into that, that being how many people claim to celebrate Halloween with more than spiked cider and this being that 9 million figure, you come up with a spend of about $86 per person. I’ve spent that much on a nativity set and I have well over 50 of them. (Really. Some people are into hairy spiders, I’m into nativities. I have them, many complete with wise men, made of clothes pins, cheesecloth, corn husks, ceramic, glass, plastic, straw, bronze, wood (carved, sculpted, machine cut and assembled, hinged, and nested), bronze, stone, steel, marble, paper, wool and rubber, sawn from barn board, and cut out of paper.) It’s what I do for Christmas so I can’t say if you want to eighty-some bucks on Halloween you’re nuts. But if you’re planning on spending eighty-some bucks on Halloween, you’re nuts! Except for the little candy bars. Those are cool.

Anyway…just yesterday I was going through my email and I came across a headline “Ugly Halloween Sweaters Were Made For People Who Are Too Lazy to Dress Up.” Well, I couldn’t pass up that piece of bait and I clicked away. What I discovered is, like ugly Christmas sweaters, the ugly Halloween sweaters really aren’t. This is just my opinion but that opinion is that they are kind of cute. The other thing I discovered is that somebody’s going to have to revise that $86 per person spending estimate. Those sweaters go for about $40 per.

For myself, I’m sticking with the faux fall flora. Maybe I’ll spend my $86 on another manger scene this Christmas.

 

Cold Comfort (Food)

Michael 4 Comments

We are moving toward the end of summer and harvest time seems to be in full swing at the local farmers’ markets. A modest investment in fresh produce turned into a couple days spinning circles in my tiny kitchen meal prepping for the next few weeks.

I always try to have something ready to eat on the days when I get home from dialysis. My scheduled time at the clinic is 11:30 which puts me back home around 5 in the afternoon. That’s the perfect time to start dinner except the last thing I want to do after dialysis is … well, anything.

During the summer I spend most of my cooking time in front of the grill on the patio. There it is easy to throw on extra of whatever I’m cooking and pack up a second meal that I would heat up for a future dialysis day dinner (DDD). In the winter, not unlike so many kitchens, mine plays host to casseroles, stews, and chilies. All yield multiple meals that can be refrigerated or frozen for use on those days when the thought of actually preparing a meal is more exhausting that actually preparing a meal.

But now we’ve entered that in between season. Eventually even I tire of my fabulous smoked chicken thighs with grilled zucchini planks and I’m not ready for Italian sausage and acorn squash casserole. What to do? Take some of that farmers’ market bounty and turn it into frozen dinners or sides. So yesterday I did just that, blanching beans, stuffing peppers, rolling cabbage leaves, and more. Now I have a freezer full of DDDs.

TVDinner

The Original

What makes any of this blog worthy? Because today celebrates the birthday of the classic American frozen dinner, Swanson TV Dinner. Yep, Sept 10, 1953 the frozen turkey dinner hit the markets and Swanson figured they’d sell maybe 5,000 of them. The first year they sold over 10 million dinners and created a new market niche.

In 1962 Swanson stopped labeling them as the “TV Dinner” but the term stuck and anybody who ever adjusted a pair of rabbit ears (go ask your grandfather) still calls any frozen meal a TV dinner.

So I’m happy to say I have celebrated National TV Dinner Day with gusto and with gustatory appropriateness (or appropriate gustatoriness).

And it’s been a pleasure to post about anything actually older than me!

Step 1 Again…The Donor Perspective

Michael 12 Comments

Now that I’ve been added to the kidney transplant waiting list the hard work begins. Finding a donor. On one hand you can sit around, stay healthy, make sure the transplant center has your current contact information, and just wait. On the other hand, you can try to find a living donor and go through all new sorts of levels of stress.

My immediate family has dwindled to a pair of sisters and a daughter. That would not be a good hand to hold in poker. But all three have expressed interest in donating and that closes the odds. They decided they would go through the donor evaluation process before we would ask if we should look to others. All three are currently in the process but at different stages. Two have been determined to be acceptable matches, one still awaits those results, and none is anywhere near completing the battery of tests donor candidates face.

You remember all the examinations and tests I had to go through? If you don’t, type “kidney transplant” in the site search bar and refresh your memory. We’ll wait. … Ok, ready? Well, as the saying goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Like mine, their first appointment was a phone interview, a few basic questions designed to screen for obvious exclusions like diabetes, untreated high blood pressure, or various cancers. Also like mine, their first on site appointment meant lots of tubes of blood, a chest x-ray, an EKG, and face to face interviews with a nephrologist, surgeon, nurse, social worker, and transplant coordinator. Unlike mine, theirs also includes a donor advocate who is also a previous donor.

Like my first appointment at the hospital they left with a handful of appointments for follow up tests. Unlike mine, theirs were unlike mine. Where mine were targeted to make certain I could sustain the rigors of the operation and maintain the required follow up to prevent rejection, potential donors are tested to make as certain as possible that they are as healthy as possible and will be able to withstand the rigors of life with a single kidney.

Potential organ donors must be at least 18 and not more than 70 years old. That’s quite a range and obviously an 18 year old is going to be and is going to expect a different level of health than a 70 year old. My potential donors are just shy of 29 and a little over 67 years old. The one in between just turned 56. Three different stages of life, three different batteries of tests. Any single test can exclude the person or become the focus of a follow-up test. Surprisingly the youngest has the biggest list of baseline tests. As she explained it, the reviewing nephrologist said a 48 year old who is healthy today has a pretty good chance of still being healthy in 20 years. He has already passed the age when chronic illnesses would have taken hold even if they aren’t obviously obvious. Being healthy today means less to the 28 year old and how she will be at 68, 58, or even 48 so her testing will be more in depth and her expected results more stringent to mitigate missing sign of problems that might develop in the future.

In all cases they are going to get the best physical they’ve ever received. And if they pass all the physical exams they even get to have a go with a psychiatrist.

That’s just in case you thought you were nuts giving away part of your body.

——

If you’d like to re-read all the posts in this thread as well as other related posts, I’ve put links to all of them on one page. Go here, to join the journey.

Related posts

First Steps (Feb. 15, 2018)
The Next Step (March 15, 2018)
The Journey Continues (April 16, 2018)
More Steps (May 31, 2018)
Step 4: The List (July 12, 2018)

 

Aw, Quit Your Wining

Michael 8 Comments

You can pretty much always find a bottle of white wine and one of Prosecco in my refrigerator. Which is really a shame when you think about it because not only should they not be committed to the same temperature, neither temperature that either should be chilled to is what a kitchen refrigerator is kept at. I used to have that handled by way of a stand-alone wine refrigerator that could handle different temperatures in different zones for different wines. Two refrigerators in fact. But those days are over.

Some of you let that pass right on by. Some noticed but didn’t notice. Some are just now wondering in almost 700 posts I’ve never given any indication of being a garden variety sot. Why so much wine? It actually isn’t a mystery of so much wine as so many refrigerators. Let me explain. If I can.

Many years ago I saw this really nice counter top wine refrigerator for some ridiculously cheap price in a remainder store. (Tuesday Morning actually if you have one of them near you. You can check them out or not. I get nothing for mentioning them. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I mentioned them. Anyway…) I looked it over and decided it would sit nicely on the bar in the family room of my old house.

This was all going on during my wine phase. I would go to the local winery every other week and always would bring something back. There were trips to the Erie and Niagara wine trails. I would explore the neighborhood wine shop for an interesting find. (By the way, one of my favorite methods for selecting new wines was the look of the label. I said I was in a wine phase, not that I had become a wine expert.) (Wait. What was I saying? Oh, right. Labels. It was by that very method that I discovered Plungerhead Lodi, a respectable old vine zinfandel.) (I don’t get anything from them either.) (Don’t worry, that didn’t go into the refrigerator. I’m not that much of a Neanderthal!)

Since I was also in a phase where I had to go overboard with everything, I had to have a separate refrigerator for wine. It couldn’t go in the beer refrigerator. The optimal temperatures for beer and wine are nothing alike. And I was in a wine phase. I needed that wine chiller. And by all that was alcoholic, I got that wine chiller. So shortly after I spotted it, the countertop wine cooler was in the back of the car and we were heading home.

Now that worked well for a time then I noticed a problem. The bar and its counter, upon which sat the countertop refrigerator, were in the family room in the lower level of the house. A reasonable place to watch hockey and drink beer. But not wine. Wine was had with dinner, after dinner, in the evening on the patio, and occasionally in the hot tub, all upper level activities.  I decided that if I drank wine upstairs I had to store it upstairs. Suddenly the cute little wine refrigerator sitting so neatly on the corner of the bar was inconvenient. I had to correct that. And since I was making more money than sense, I couldn’t just move the one I had.

WineCoolerSo it was back on the hunt. In fact, it was back to Tuesday Morning (who still isn’t giving me anything for mentioning them, the nerve!), where I found an upright wine refrigerator with two zones, each one’s temperature individually controlled so you could keep different wines at their own optimal temps. (I was getting better in this wine phase thingy.) Of course I had to have it, so it came home with me and went into the sun room on the upper level where after dinner drinking and near where during dinner drinking and on patio drinking and drunken hot tubing drinking happened. Yet all the while the cute little counter top wine cooler continued to cool wine on top of the counter on the bar just in case I had the urge to raise a Riesling while watching hockey on the big screen. And all was right with the world. For several years actually.

But then I moved and the new place doesn’t have an upstairs or a downstairs or a dining room or even a hot tub. I really wanted somebody in the family to take custody of one or the other of the wine refrigerators but my sisters already had their version and my daughter didn’t have room.  So both refrigerators were sold and less was right with the world for now I have to keep my Prosecco chilling next to the orange juice.

But that really isn’t such a bad thing since most Sunday mornings they get together anyway. Well, I still have a patio.

What Have You

Michael 4 Comments

I spent a day in the car last week doing some visiting, running some errands, and generally taking on a “what have you” type day. In the course of that day I discovered a few things.

I had the radio on listening to a sports talk program. A question came up regarding how we listen to music. It’s not hockey season so sports talk takes in rather diverse subject matters. Both hosts mentioned the listen to songs stored on their phones or streamed on a service. One admitted he still listens to the radio but only in the car. Both said they haven’t played a CD in years and iPods are basically modern relics. Boy am I behind the times! Almost all my music is on CDs and what isn’t is on an MP3 player.

ReceiptsReceipts continue to be out of control. Just earlier this year I wrote about the nearly 22 inch long receipt I got at the grocery store. Any paper saved by newspapers no longer printing hard copy editions is being used in store receipts. It was reinforced on my “what have you” day when I got home and emptied my bags and pockets and sat two receipts side by side. I present the photographic evidence here. Together, both receipts reflect a total of 7 items purchased. The longer receipt from Walgreens is for 2 each of 2 different items. The shorter Walmart receipt represents 3 individual pieces. I guess if you’re looking to save the environment, go to Walmart.

Because I got hungry on my “what have you” day, I made a quick run through the drive through at Burger King. Since I had just read about it in some magazine I thought I’d try their Veggie King, basically a Whopper made with a veggie burger. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. What merits inclusion of this stop in this post of what have you’s is not the faux burger but the soft drink. You cannot drink a soft drink in a moving vehicle without a straw given the current lids used on soft drink cups. Of course anybody who is anybody is denouncing plastic drinking straws this year so much so that McDonald’s and Starbucks have both announced plans to move to biodegradable straws in some unspecified future. As I sipped my soft drink through the offending tube I wonder if those chains will also be shifting to biodegradable trash bags or if their expensive earth saving sipper will remain undegraded for a few thousand years encased in black plastic.

Can I come up with some random thoughts while doing what have you!

All of the Somebodies

Michael 6 Comments

Before I begin I want to say that if you’ve become accustomed to my constant comments and I’ve become inexplicably silent on your blogs, I’ve had some issue commenting. For some reason, WordPress doesn’t think I’m logged in to my account even after I log in to my account. I can post. I can “like.” I just can’t comment. Sometimes. Most of the times. But not not all of the times. I can comment on all of the people some of the time; I can comment on some of the people all of the time; but I can’t comment on all of the people all of the time. And if I haven’t been commenting on yours, you’re probably some of the all. But probably not all of the some.

And before I continue, you might have noticed over the past few weeks I hadn’t posted as often or as regularly. As regularly or as often? I’m sure it makes a difference as to which comes first but not to the world which remarkably kept spinning regardless of me posting often or regularly. Or regularly or often. Anyway, I hadn’t. I hadn’t had much to say.

I think I might have not had much to say because I hadn’t been feeling myself. This was odd because so many people I have run across the past few weeks have taken what seemed to be pains to tell me how well I looked. I’m not sure why that surprised so many. I don’t have a flesh eating bacterial infection which with maybe gross morbid obesity are the only conditions that could make one not look well. Just about anything else isn’t readily evident. Well, just about any other chronic condition. You give somebody a full blown summer cold with the sneezing and the running nose and the watery eyes and that person will look like the definition of not well for a week to 10 days. But if you saddle somebody with a chronic condition, particularly one controlled with medication or treatment, that somebody tends to look like everybody else.

I almost cringe when I see the commercials on TV for this month’s miracle cure in which the person playing the person in need of the cure looks into the camera and says with all the sincerity a poorly paid commercial actor, “but I look normal.” Well, guess what? So does everybody else. It is not only the rare diseases that masquerade as normal. I bet you couldn’t pick out of the crowd somebody with high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, COPD, or hypothyroidism.

I also almost cringe whenever I hear people use the terms “chronic disease” and “chronic illness” when what they really want to say is “this thing I have that nobody understands and took me a dozen doctors before I found one who understands it.” I can say that because I’ve probably done that. But really, if you’re going to add for special consideration or exceptional treatment because you have a “chronic illness” you better include somebody with high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, COPD, or hypothyroidism because those are just as chronic.

But I digress. I guess I haven’t written much because I haven’t felt like myself. Don’t worry though. The world indeed will continue to spin and I’ll soon snap out of it and will be back to rambling in no time.

Until then, I think I might try to comment on this post. That should really confuse WordPress.

Bloody Hell

Michael 1 Comment

It’s nice to have memories. Pictures are good reminders of things fun times and people. Certificates bring back the pride of recognition. Scars are my reminders of usually something stupid I did.

Last week I was reminded of a scar as I was conversing with a friend. She had mentioned the previous night, actually early that morning, unusual activity in the house across the street from her. Lights were on at a time they shouldn’t have been and cars were in the driveway that shouldn’t have been. Immediately my mind went to activity at my house that shouldn’t have been.

I once ended up in the emergency room seven stitches to close a cut that I got from walking into a cardboard box. I don’t know why nobody could understand how a piece of cardboard sliced my leg open so efficiently that I had left a trail of blood from the living room through the dining room into the kitchen where it collected into a pool of blood rivaling what one usually finds beneath a freshly slaughtered chicken. And I use that animal as the example because I was scared like the proverbial chicken not just at the thought that I might die of massive blood loss on a newly laid kitchen floor while all the sharp objects lay safely nestled in their holders, but that if I lived long enough for someone to try to close that gash it was going to involve other sharp objects like scrapers and needles and undoubtedly a tetanus shot. Maybe it wasn’t a chicken I was channeling as much as a scaredy cat.

What happened that one morning I was up early roaming the house with only the light coming through the windows to guide me. There wasn’t much light because it just shortly after five in the morning but it was an August morning so full sunrise wasn’t that far away. Besides I had gone down that hall to the living room for 29 years and I was certain where to step. Except this was that period of time between having a contract to sale the house and actually moving out and closing on the deal. More specifically it was at the moving out stage and that’s why there were boxes hither and yon. One of the ones in yon was right next to my chair where I had planned to plop myself and watch the morning news. As I rounded the bend I walked into the box catching a top corner with the outside of my leg and I knew immediately I had done something unpleasant. I knew immediately because that’s how long it took for me to feel blood running down my leg.

TheBoxI thought at first it was just a scratch and I started a hobble back down the hall to the bathroom to wash and dress it. Then I saw how much blood covered my hand when I brought it back up from checking what I’d done. I altered course for the nearer kitchen sink and by the time I got there I had left a trail Dracula could have sniffed out from his home in Transylvania. I grabbed a towel and tied it around my leg, grabbed the phone, called my daughter for help, and went back to apply as much pressure as I could to the outside of my leg.

I should mention that all this was happening about 8 weeks after I got out of the hospital for the marathon four month stay and probably hadn’t the strength to apply sufficient pressure to stop a paper cut. By the time my daughter got to the house I looked like the victim of a mugging. I was on the floor with my leg elevated on the lower rung of a kitchen stool. I was whiter than the towel that continued to get redder. I held the phone in one hand trying to dial 911 with just that hand while the other was feebly twisting said kitchen towel around my calf. Between the calling of the daughter and her arrival I decided we weren’t going to be able to staunch this flow and navigate our way to the required help ourselves and opted for professional assistance.

Not much later were in the ER, an IV running to replace my lost fluids, a clean dressing covering my first stitches not associated with surgery, and awaiting the dreaded tetanus shot, we discussed where to go for breakfast. It was after all still morning and my kitchen was busy doing its imitation of a crime scene. Not much gets between me and food.

So that’s what I thought of when my friend had seen activity in the early hours across the street and as I ran my hand over the scar on my lower leg I wondered what my neighbors might have thought on my unusually active morning.

Incidentally, if you ever want to get the front of the line at an emergency room, show up in an ambulance and bleeding.

Never Underestimate the Power of an Offspring

Michael 2 Comments

A while ago WD Fyfe posted “Stuff I’ve Learned from Literature,” a collection of life’s lessons from the pages of best sellers such as “never volunteer for anything” as taught by The Hunger Games. In a comment I added “never underestimate the power of a woman” learned from “anything by Ian Fleming” to which he replied, “Including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Of course my reference to Ian Fleming was to the Bond Girls of the 007 franchise but the famous children’s story turned movie has several strong female characters. Perhaps a Fleming trait?

CCBBYou didn’t know that the author of sixteen Bond, James Bond spy novels tossed in one book about a magical car? He did. Published right between You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun it was the last book he wrote. Based on bedtime stories he told his son Casper, he wrote as he convalesced from a heart attack from which he never fully recovered.

That got me thinking which as you know not only do I have the time for but is also rarely a good thing yet often results in a blog post. Thank you Bill.

So … the world is full of talented authors and more than a few of them are both quite well known and are parents. So how many of the well-known parents have favored their children with tales that themselves became well known in spite of the parent not being well known for authoring children’s books. I found three. Four if you stretch a point.

The second to come to mind and first in the “I didn’t know that” list is Mr. Fleming’ famous tale of the famous car. The first author famous for a child’s story harkening back to his child to come to mind but on the “but what else did he do” list is A. A. Milne. If before this summer’s film release you didn’t know Christopher Robin was indeed Christopher Robin Milne and Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger were the younger Milne’s childhood toys, you do now. But before the poem featuring Winnie-the-Pooh appeared in When We Were Very Young, the elder Milne was known as a playwright.

Also on the list is one known more for penning songs. Kelly Clarkson, former “American Idol” winner and singer/songwriter has also published two children’s books inspired by and featuring her daughter River Rose. Though not yet classics, who knows what we might be saying about them in fifty years.

PatTheBunnyAfter extensive research spanning at least 30 minutes, the closest I could come to uncovering another author who was known for one thing but exploded on to the scene with a book inspired by an offspring is the historian Dorothy Kuhnhardt, author of the 1965 winner for longest title, Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Nights That Followed–The Nation in Mourning, the Long Trip Home to Springfield. The book she wrote as her gift to her daughter is more succinctly titled Pat the Bunny. I say this is a bit of a stretch to my search because although Kuhnhardt was a legitimate historian and author, the books she is better known for are the children’s volumes which she was putting out before the first bunny was patted but the patting was going on before she wrote the first book. It’s all very confusing and probably doesn’t belong on the list but I liked the book both as readee and reader.

There are many well-known authors who have written children’s books but were they inspired by stories they told their own children? Google doesn’t know about any so I guess not. If you do, share, but be sure to tell Google too. Can you tell Google anything?

 

Remotely Technological

Michael 3 Comments

If I had to describe myself I would avoid it. But if I couldn’t, depending on the context, I would say I am a technologically aware luddite. I’m not anti-progress, I’m just don’t care about it. Actually, most other things I care about more. Work had the necessary bells and whistles. Home had bells. And whistles. And too many of them sometimes.

I wouldn’t be the first to say we’re advancing in the wrong direction. Take a look at your wrist. If it’s not there, on the wrist of somebody you know is a smart watch doing all the things Dick Tracy’s did in the 40s looking remarkable like what Kojak wore in the 70s. In fact, if you’ve got a spare $500 laying around, you can get a brand new Dick Tracy watch.

I don’t. But what I do have laying around is a new remote that might finally be progressing to where I suggested they go six years ago. Look at the remote on the left. Ignoring those 4 shortcut buttons toward the bottom, there are only 10 buttons on it. That’s the voice remote for my Roku Stick.

Remotes

Compare that the to the voice remote for my cable with its 39 buttons which is actually 14 buttons less than the cable remote that sparked my post six years ago. Eventually we might get to power, volume, and the one that looks like a cross.

Oh, I didn’t get the more slender if not more fashion forward remote to join the entertainment streaming masses here in the 21st century. I just got tired spending $130 for cable. Like I said (as I said?), I’m not anti-progress. But I can be cheap.

My Day

Michael 6 Comments

I’ve never done a “day in my life” post and you should be thrilled. Unfortunately, all good things must end and your thrill just ended.

Today is not a just any old day in my life though. Today I went to the hospital. For the first 57 years of my life I never spent a night in a hospital unless I was working there. I never even had an outpatient procedure until I was 55. Wait. That’s not completely true. I was born in the fifties in the USA where childbirth was a minimum three day hospital stay. But after that, all my sleep was in my own bed or one of my choosing. Ok, that’s not 100% true either. There were some nights the U. S. Army insisted I spend away from my favorite pillow. But otherwise…

ADIL

Back to today. Don’t worry. It won’t be that traumatic an event. We’re just going for a simple procedure to open the fistula used for my dialysis. A fistula is a piece of artery and one of vein sewn together and pulled to just under the skin so the dialysis nurse can more easily jam a pair of needles roughly the size of a ball point pen into it. With all the puncturing and high velocity blood flow, the inside of the fistula scars and it slowly narrows, raising the pressure of the blood flow through it, decreasing the efficiency of the dialysis treatment. To correct this, because my fistula is in my upper arm, the surgeon will cut a small hole and enter the vein just below the fistula and thread a catheter through the vein into the fistula. This will be tracked by a scanner mounted over my arm transmitting images to a monitor above me. Once the physician finds the narrowed space he’ll pass a balloon into the catheter, up to the fistula and inflate it, pushing the occlusion against the vessel wall. (If that sounds like what you’ve heard as coronary angioplasty that’s because it’s the same procedure except on a fistula rather than a coronary artery.) While all this is happening I’ll be half asleep making incoherent conversation with the surgeon. It’s ok. He’s a friend.

MPH

Breakfast

I woke up a little after 6 showered (no, no pictures there), dressed comfortably, and got breakfast. This morning’s breakfast was two mycophenolate capsules and a sip of water since I will be anesthetized to the point of being half asleep. About 8:30 my sister came to take me to the hospital. She will be my accompaniment for the day since I will be anesthetized to the point of being half asleep. Because we’re Italian she brought food.

Traffic was light and we got to the hospital a few minutes after nine for my 9:30 report time. The nice lady in registration breezed me through and sent me off to the outpatient department with a stop at the lab for a quick blood draw. We arrived in the outpatient department at 9:45. By 10:05 I was changed into a hospital gown (still no pictures), had vitals recorded, an IV started in my left wrist, and left to wait for someone from the cath lab to come get me at 11:30. This was a boring 85 minutes and I read the paper. Did I mention it was boring?

 

Fistula_Before

Before

At 11:40 I got picked up for the procedure I already described, it went off without a hitch, and I went back to my room in the outpatient department where they said I looked great, go home.

Fistula_After

After

We went home, had lunch (a late lunch since it was then 2:30) my sister went home and because we’re Italian, I gave her food. Then I sat down and wrote this.

You know what? These things are really dull. Who came up with this idea anyway? In case you’re wondering, I am now just wonderful and when I go back to dialysis I’ll have the smoothest flowing blood of anyone there.

And you heard it here first!