I remember being super anxious post-heart surgery. At the time, I was just starting to recover, and didn’t know what was happening with my potential kidney transplant. Little did I know that 2020 was going to get a lot worse. I was freaking out because I thought it would take a long time to get back on the transplant list. I was also dreading dialysis a lot more than before. Yet here we are twelve months later and I’m still on hemodialysis. The long awaited kidney transplant is closer but not guaranteed yet.
I’m a bit worried about losing a lot of weight this year. I was probably around 235 pounds pre surgery and now I’m about 175. That’s a loss of 60 pounds. It’s weird looking at myself in the mirror. I look really skinny in the upper half of my torso. You can really see my collarbone and my upper arms have stretch marks where I lost a lot of fat and muscle. There are so many complications with dialysis and kidney failure that I don’t know what is normal anymore. I woke up at 2:00 am again this morning after going to bed at 11:00 pm. I probably fell back asleep at around 4:30 am then woke up at 8:30 am again. Now I’m tired so I’ll probably nap until the next event on my work calendar at 2:30 pm. I can’t imaging how life would be like if I had to drive into work everyday. Probably falling asleep at my desk all the time.
I guess I’m trying to say that humans are pretty adaptable. I thought I would go crazy if I had to continue dialysis for another year but we’re past that anniversary. I also thought I could not stand locked up at home and was super glad to get back to work in February. Then COVID-19 hit and bam, I’m stuck at home for the next nine months with no end in sight. I’m trying not to plan too far ahead with regards to the kidney transplant since a lot of things could still happen. One of the things I wanted to do post-transplant was to travel again but that looks like it’s not going to happen soon.
Life with chronic diseases 