Sunday Drinking

Today I am chugging bottles of water. I am on number three. I am doing this to make myself pee. I have a large jug that I am peeing into, and saving. On Tuesday, when I go to dialysis, I will bring my pee jug and hopefully there will be enough pee in there for them to inspect it.

My kidneys, you see, are on strike. It happened back in January. Remember? I almost died! Well, not really. But I was pretty damn sick, and my kidneys decided to join every other part of my body in disfunction. So now I go to dialysis three times a week.

Hang on, gotta chug some more water.

Okay, I’m back. Anyway, dialysis. They suck the blood out of my body, clean it up, and stick it back in. That’s a highly medical description. Basically my role is go to the hospital, get weighed, and sit in a chair for three-and-a-half hours. I’ve tried everything–reading, watching TV, fooling around with my phone–but sweet Jesus, three-and-a-half hours is never less than three-and-a-half hours.

Dialysis saves my life on a weekly basis. But on some level I hate it. My love of travel, for example, is now something from the past. I can’t survive a week without the treatments. I got a brochure about how if I want to go on vacation, I can call the local dialysis center where I’m going and set up treatments. So in other words, I spend X amount of dollars to go to Los Angeles for a week, and spend three of my eight days, seven nights in a dialysis center. I can’t see that trip being much fun. Also, I adore traveling by train. It’ll probably never happen again. That’s a gut punch.

Don’t get me wrong. I most certainly WILL be traveling. But it will be day trips with friends. Maybe a weekend in Denver. I have to curb my expectations.

Hang on….gotta chug some more water.

Okay, I’m back. The point of this “chug and pee” operation is for the doctor to see if there’s any improvement in my kidneys. It’s possible. But I have a feeling I’m a lifer. I know I shouldn’t be negative, but honestly my overall feeling with dialysis is negative. I feel like I’ve gone from a gradual, paced aging process to being shot out of a cannon into “OLD MAN.” All of the other people I see in dialysis ARE old, elderly or pushing it. It makes me think of my own mortality, which normally only comes to me when I’m laying in my bed at 3:30am. Now I think about my own mortality…well, three times a week.

Also, since my first dialysis treatment in Colorado, people have been pushing me to get a Hepatitis vaccine. I’ve denied the offer several times, because I tend to have bad reactions to vaccines. Two years in a row the flu shot made me sick enough to miss work. So I gave it up. But I have gotten the Covid vaccine and boosters, the last one of which left me sick enough to require a quickie trip to the hospital.

I know a dialysis facility is surrounded by blood. I know hepatitis is a genuine threat. But after what happened to me in January, I just would prefer not to be injected with something that I have past proof might make me very sick.

But a doctor visited with me and talked me into it. Now I’m terrified as to what will happen when I get the shots. The doctor himself said to me, “When you get sick, you get really sick.” My concern exactly! But I am going to get the shots–there are three of them–and pray that I don’t have another Sunday morning like January 15th. Or like the day after I got the covid booster. In both cases I woke up a numb, flopping mass…unable to walk, only able to drag myself across the carpet, hit my head on walls, and–in the case of the covid shot–be stupid enough to get a huge gash in my elbow that left my pants, shirt, chair and God knows what else covered with my blood.

So yeah….let’s get three hepatitis vaccines and see if I make it to 52.

Hang on, I gotta pee.

I’m back. I think I’m gonna fill this thing up if I maintain this pace.

I get very negative sometimes, and I just happened to write about it today. But I know I’m very lucky. Lucky to have a workplace that is willing to work around my treatments. I’m lucky to have an incredible group of medical professionals who take such good care of me (and all the patients) in dialysis. Lucky to be doing my dialysis treatments in Alliance! And just lucky to have joyful things in my life, like seeing those hillbilly rapscallions The Riverfront Boys at the Dead Unicorn Society. Or making internet radio shows with my pals. Or listening to my “Robin and the 7 Hoods” soundtrack album. Or watching four episodes of “Adam-12” I had saved on my DVR.

It’s a good life. It’d be better if I could ride the train one more time. Perhaps these kidneys will get their act in gear someday. And perhaps not. Either way, all I can do is enjoy the good times.