Me and My Kidneys

Three days a week I go to the dining room at 11:00 a.m., gobble down my lunch, and at 11:30 rush out to climb in the van and go to dialysis.   

The other day, as I waved goodby to my friends who were lingering over their chicken and potatoes, someone said to me, “You are so brave!”

No way.  There is nothing brave about my routine. 

My kidneys do not work well.  Also, I have sleep apnea and sleep with a CPAP machine.  I have a ridiculous body, topped with a flat chest (due to a double mastectomy) plus a bulging belly.  A freak intestine makes me look like an eight-months pregnant great-grandmother.  Otherwise, I am in excellent health.

I asked the doctor, “Couldn’t I skip dialysis for a week and take a little trip?”  (I would love to spend a week in San Antonio or on the beach at Galveston, or, best of all, return to see my friends in the mountains of New Mexico.)

The doctor said, “If you miss dialysis treatments for a week, you will die.”

That is incentive to continue. 

Hey!  I am 83 years old!  Still driving my car.  Still writing my own checks and balancing my bank account.  Still walking without leaning on a walker.  I do not have to be “brave” when I am still active. . 

I am in much better health than everyone else I see at the dialysis center.  My kidneys were damaged by medication and still function (i.e., I pee freely); they just do not filter the poisons out of my blood.  The other patients all have more complicated medical problems.  Many are diabetic.  A hefty gray-haired man is brought in on a stretcher; his torso is big and strong, but he lost both legs due to diabetes.  I talk to a patient, an older woman, her legs swollen to three times the normal size, who has not peed in ten years.  A 21-year-old comes in munching on bags of chips; he was born with non-functioning kidneys and has been on dialysis all his life.  

For me dialysis has become routine.  Just as at 10:30 every night I brush my teeth and go to bed every night with Letterman on the television, three days a week I go to the dialysis center, climb into my recliner, let the technician stick two needles into my left arm, and sit for three hours and 15 minutes watching “Family Feud” (I have my own little tv screen and ear phones).  I also read the weekly editions of Time and The New Yorker, the latter with cartoons as an antidote to the depressing news in the former.

The only problem is that with dialysis consumes three days a week.  I have little time for anything else.  When am I going to complete the two books I am writing?

One of the old ladies who lives with me at the retirement home is a tall, distinguished looking black woman, a former school teacher.  When I ask her, “How are you doing?” she always says, “I am still kicking.  Not very high, but I’m still kicking.”

That’s me, too.