Fatherhood is sneaking up on me...

I find myself enjoying the kid's preparation for Halloween way too much. I wanna go back to being the somewhat young curmudgeon I was...

Why me?

OK, so I still have not heard back from the Mortgage guy. Why is this so hard?

More fun for me.

Just great. I have another cold. Hopefully, this one will not turn into pneumonia like the last one...

At least that is sorted out

It looks like my mortgage is going to a different bank. My interest rate fell a bit, but my PMI went up. In the end it is a wash. Apparently this is all going to be sorted out by the end of the week. Hopefully it will work this time. The nice thing is that I apparently get another couple of months without paying a mortgage. I should be able to save up a bit of cash and go into this much better off that I expected.

Mortgage issues

Should I be concerned that I have no idea who currently holds my mortgage? As of right now, the mortgage broker I used has paid the money and is waiting for the bank to stop asking for silly things to get the money from them. I'm not sure why the bank keeps asking for more stuff, but seeing as how I was supposed to be making my first payment sometime in October, the fact that I am not sure who owns this thing and I have not received any information regarding who I am supposed to pay is making me a little nervous. Here's hoping I don't suddenly find myself with no mortgage and owing a truckload of money real fast or something like that...

Dread Maintenance

I went and got my hair cleaned up yesterday. I really liked the place. The people were nice, the work was good and they even threw in a free shave. While it wasn't cheap, it was not as expensive as the place I went to in MPLS. Nothing to complain about there! They'll be getting more of my money in the future.

Housewarming

Had the housewarming yesterday and it went well. The downside is that I now have a mountain of food left over. I really need to learn moderation when buying food one of these days. :-)

More housing crap

Not that this is a surprise to anyone, but Banks suck. The bank that was supposed to underwrite my mortgage keeps coming back and asking for more information, including classically stupid things like "Was the money you paid in your account before you gave the real estate agent that cashier's check?" given that I can not get a cashier's check from the bank without the money being in my freaking account, I would love to know why they are asking this question.

On the plus side, if they keep this crap up, the mortgage broker says they will simply take our loan to another bank and given that interest rates have dropped since we closed, we might get a better rate.

More fun with weight loss

Just to let you all know, I have issues with getting skinnier. I had to go and not only get a smaller pants size, I had to also get extra holes punched into my belt in order to be able to still wear my old pants (which look like tents on me now... I had no idea I was carrying around so much extra me. And the weird part is that I have only lost about 22-25 lbs. Kind of scary.

On the plus side, it means that I can get into t-shirts I have not been able to wear for years! :-)

Center of attention

It may just be my overinflated sense of self but I would swear that everyone in the house, including the cat, seems to want to be around me all of a sudden. I come home and suddenly people are yelling for my attention. Not horrible, but definitely something I would like to go away some days.

While I am happy to help them with whatever they want, I would also like to be able to come home and just be a bit of a vegetable once in a while. I have been on high alert for a month or more with house related stuff and I would like a chance to relax for a bit.

You know, maybe do something like unpack MY stuff now?

Finally!

The old house is empty and clean. We have repaired the minor damage that we caused, including the door J kicked in out of frustration last summer. That one was kind of fun and made me realize that I actually do know something about construction, though I am still learning. I should have fixed it long before now, but what do you want from me, I'm occasionally very lazy! :-)

Mom adventures

Finally told my Mom over the weekend that I had bought a house. She seemed happy about that but then gave me yet another lecture about how I should "make it legal" with J. This is a conversation we have had several times with no real change on either side. I guess it's just going to be one of those things.

New home stuff

I think we are getting settled into the new house. I keep finding things I need to do around the house, but it is getting closer and closer to being home. We have finally gotten everything out of the old house (except the grill. Tomorrow, I swear) and are finally getting this place set up in some semblance of comfortable and organized. My man-cave is still a colossal mess, but it is getting better. I just need some more shelving and some wiring done to get myself all set up.

I will also need a stand for my TV. That is going to be interesting...

I have a new address

Well, we've moved. As might be expected there is much cleaning up left to do at both houses, but we are pretty much moved. we sleep in the new house and all of my books and computers are there, so it counts as home for me.

If I have not sent you an email telling you the new address, let me know.

Nerdity!

The last week or so has been good for my Nerd self. I went to a birthday party over the weekend for a friend of J's and it turns out that it was a house full of Nerds! I spent plenty of time talking about various movies, books and related things. Just about the only thing we didn't get into was D&D. Oh well, it can't be all perfect!

I also discovered that one of my co-workers is a comics nerd as well. It's a good thing to be able to stand around and chat about comics with someone again.

It ain't quite Nerdvana, but it's getting better.

The final countdown!

Tomorrow is the walk through for the house. Can you tell I'm a bit nervous that I am getting this close to the final commitment. Wow, major life choices are scary! :-)

House stuff

Looks like the house is a go. We've got all of the paperwork filled out, we are looking to buy a new fridge in a week and the closing is next Friday. God, this scares the holy living crap out of me. Maybe I will be happier in 30 years when this loan is paid off.

Weight

By the way, I am down to 190. I haven't been this light since the end of my freshman year in college. Now on to going back to my Senior year in high school weight, before I discovered abundant free beer!

My life is stress.

I think the universe is out to get me. I'm suddenly poor. Apparently the kids suddenly need the world bought for them. J's brother is now a money pit. And this house thing is going to inspire a full blown stroke in me if i do not get it resolved soon.

I figure the reason for all this stress is that I am now responsible for people other than myself. My life was nice and simple before I had to worry about what happened to anyone but me. While there have always been people who would have been affected if I suddenly dropped dead, now there are people who will be greatly affected if I simply fail. This is a problem for me. I'm way too old to have to suddenly have to start working other people's issues into my own.

There's a reason I said I was never going to be a parent.

Even more holy crap!

I think we've found the house we're going to buy!

Holy Crap!

I'm trying to buy a house.

Weight loss update

It's almost a crime that it has taken me this long to lose only 10 pounds. I was doing fine until the barbecue in MA. I came back from that 5 lbs heavier. Not quite sure how I did that, but there you have it. :-)

I'm doing better now, losing 1-2 lbs a week, which means that I will take another 12 weeks to get to my goal weight of 170.

Weight loss efforts

I am being more active but I am still not going to the gym. I really need to change that. Despite that, I am still slowly losing weight. We'll see how much this weekend's trip to New England for the annual barbecue impacts my progress!

General status report

1) I am starting to get into the swing of things with my job. I still have along way to go because this place, technologically speaking, is just huge. I get to ask dumb questions every day. Fortunately, I don't have to ask most of them twice!

2) This parenting thing is really starting to get to me. I am discovering that I get to play the hard man all the time. J and her mother do not really seem to understand the concept of "This is the way it is going to be kiddo!" when dealing with the two three year olds. While I do not enjoy being mean to a small child, I also realize that if you want said child to grow up into a decent human being who has respect for other people and the rules of their environment, you have to enforce those rules pretty strictly early on or there is no hope of enforcing them later. I feel like the one lone good cop in a totally corrupt precinct.

3) My health seems to be cranking along nicely. I finally went in for my transplant clinic appointment and it went well. They seem to be of the opinion that I am exceedingly healthy. While I don't doubt that I am, I am a little nervous about the sort of glib attitude. I have had too many things go wrong in the last two years to take it on faith that everything is going to work out. We'll see how it goes in the next few months.

4) I actually appear to be losing weight. I've already dropped 6 pounds as of my official weigh-in last Saturday. I appear to be on track to lose another 3 pounds or so this week. I figure I'm doing well for now. I also know that I will have to get off my butt and start hitting the gym now if I want to continue this progress. Reducing caloric intake can only get you so far when you're not grossly obese. I'm going to have to make my body start working harder soon. Especially since I have noticed that my knees aren't quite as strong as they were when I was playing Rugby. I need to build up those ligaments and tendons again. I don't want my knee to start popping out of joint again!

New Comic Book Day

As yet another Wednesday rolls around, I, having been up since 3am, feel the need to bitch about the lack of a decent equivalent of The Source Comics and Games here in St Louis. I have discovered a decent comic shop (Star Clipper Comics), but it definitely seems designed to appeal to a different comics buyer then me. Though I have no desire to be in a shop full of overweight, socially inept, basement dwelling trolls, I would like a shop that caters more directly to the comics nerd, rather than to the comics hipsters. Unfortunately, Star Clipper seems to be doing the latter. When I walk into a comic shop, I expect to be able to talk comics with the people who work there. The folks at the store are nice enough, but there seems to be some sort of gap between me and them. Not sure what it is, but it is there. It might be my growing curmudgeonly nature, but I don't think so.

Anyway, I miss The Source because on Wednesday, there was a palpable, electric thrill in the air because the new books were out on the shelves. The staff was there in full force and the comics geeks were too, debating the merits of everything out on the shelves, new and old. Star Clipper has a much more sedate feel that doesn't seem right to me on new comic book day.

I have also found a small local shop. I don't think that one will work for me because:

a) The place is pretty small. Accordingly, the selection is a bit limited. Not a problem for your average Marvel/DC fanboy, but not so good for me.

b) The stock and the owner's mindset seems to be aimed squarely at the mainstream comics reader. Nothing wrong with that, because that is what sells, but I like the more offbeat stuff. Hell, the books I am looking forward to the most these days is the Virgin Comics reboot of Dane Dare and most of the Warren Ellis/Avatar comics (especially Gravel!). Not something your average comic book fanboy would say I think.

Anyway, I am going to stop now because I am bumming myself out. Hopefully, I will resolve this issue sometime soon.

Father's day

I found Father's Day to be a very weird experience. While I am not an actual father, J and family have definitely adopted me as such. It was odd to have small children climbing on me in bed and asking me what I think of the gifts they got me. I'm not sure quite how I felt about the experience.

Ah well. We'll see how I do next year.

That was unexpected

I've decided to start doing the Jenny Craig diet thing so that I can lose a few pounds on purpose this time. While I have managed to drop weight in the past, it was usually associated with a visit to the hospital or at least the need to go to a hospital. :-)

If I can pull this off, I will be lighter than I have been since my freshman year of college. It's a weird thought.

Finally!

I got my employee badge and parking permit. This will make life easier because I can now go into work without having to stop at the front gate and get my car searched by the armed security guards. This will make my morning commute a little easier! :-)

Moving continues

Got the truck unpacked and a bunch of stuff moved to where it is supposed to exist in the house. Unfortunately, there is a much larger chunk of stuff that is not where it its supposed to be. Life is going to be real fun for the next few days.

I hate moving

OK, the house in MN is packed up. Complete nightmare. I'm in St Louis and waiting to get it unpacked. This is so much fun I don't know how to deal with it.

The second week begins...

and I still do not have a logon for the network, a parking pass or an emplyee badge yet. At least I am getting paid! :-)

First day on the new job

Just finished up my first day. Ultra boring. They were really kind of unprepared for me. Hopefully they will get some of this stuff sorted out tomorrow and I can get down to doing some serious work for them.

Life is not cutting me a break...

OK, I get out of the hospital and I'm all ready to head back up to MN to collect the rest of my stuff. All good right? Well, it was until I got a call from the folks that hired me, asking me if I could start a week early... Since I want this job and I don't want to make any waves, I said yes, but this is throwing a serious monkey wrench into my planning here!

I guess my possessions will have to wait a couple more weeks...

Out and about

I'm out of the hospital and wandering the great wide world once again, hoping that I can manage to get myself together enough to actually get moved in time to start my new job.

Since I was already committed to being in St Louis this weekend, going back north is out of the question until at least Monday. Then comes a furious packing period and a long drive with a U-Haul back down here. Here's hoping my Iowa driving curse doesn't hit with the big truck!

This one's a bit late...

Sorry if anyone has been trying to get hold of me for the last week, but I have been pretty incommunicado. I have a great excuse though: I've been in the Hospital, recovering from pneumonia again.

It's nowhere near as bad as my last bout with it. I actually expect to be going home in the next day or two with a batch of antibiotics and possibly some new doctors.

More on my medical adventures in Saint Louis later.

Recruiters, Ahoy!

Apparently, something on the various job sites clicked with recruiters this week. I keep getting random phone calls and emails from recruiters. I wish I knew what it was so that I could add more of it to my resume! :-)

That was fast

I got a job offer yesterday. I took it.

Saint Louis Bound

Well, I may as well admit it. I am going to be moving to Saint Louis. I have already started to transfer stuff down to Jen's place and I am packing up more of it as we speak.

Hopefully, I will get myself organized and out the door in a reasonable fashion. My problem is that I have discovered that I do not like to move. I get myself all settled in in a space and I like to stay there for a while. In that while, my packrat sensibilities usually get the better of me. Back when I was moving almost every year, life was easier. I had no time to build up all this crap.

Unfortunately for me, I have been here for almost 4 years, making the task of clearing out the junk just a little intimidating. I actually have a room that seems to be nothing more than the place where I put all the stuff I don't know what to do with. Gonna be fun to clear that one out...

Current Job hunt status

I had a phone interview this week and it appears that it went well. The recruiter called to say that the client seemed happy with me. There are some more interviews, but as of right now I appear to be the top choice. I should hear more on Monday or Tuesday.

Job search condurndum

I seem to be in some gray area between being a Regular Joe and being a Senior Joe. It is making job searching kind of irritating. I keep getting contacted by recruiters and consulting companies that want Senior guys but then they say I don't have enough experience. It's kind of irritating.

Change of focus

Since I seem to be alarmingly healthy these days, I have not had a lot to say in this blog for a while. I think it is time for this to focus on something else for a while. That something else is going to be my quest for a new job in lovely Saint Lois, MO. Hopefully, this will be a short change in the blog. Whether it takes a week or six months, I try to keep this updated on my quest for employment.

Been a while, eh?

Once again, I have been lacking on updates. I have no real excuse other than the fact that I have been working ludicrous hours at work and I never seem to think of adding to this while I am at work. It's a real bitch actually having to do some work, eh? :-)

Anyway, life is going pretty well other than having to work so much. I am actually starting to adjust my schedule so that I get up earlier so that I can actually go to work and get out earlier. It's been surprisingly enjoyable. We'll see how long it lasts.

On the medical front, things have been quite good. Haven't even been in a hospital except for routine tests this year. Nothing unexpected at all. That's also a surprisingly good feeling!

September 11th

Given that I was sitting in Midtown Manhattan when the first tower was hit, had a college friend on one of the planes and knew far too many people who worked in the vicinity (though thankfully, no one in the towers), September 11th has always been a tough day for me. Hell, it took me three years just to be able to go back to Ground Zero and visit.

I find many the things that have been done in the name of "protecting" us from future happenings like this to be more than a little reprehensible and a black mark on the memories of the many people who died as a result of the attack. Hopefully, when Dubya goes away in January 2009, some good sense will be restored to the people in charge and their attitudes towards things like this.

I hope everyone has a decent day and takes a moment to remember the attack and put in a word with their chosen deity that this sort of thing never happens again anywhere.

General update

I've realized I have been slacking here again. I have a good excuse though.

1) I have actually been having a life. In the last month or so, I have been to my girlfriend's twin's birthday party, to Chicago (for the first time, no less) to see the USA Eagles play Munster RFC in a Rugby World Cup tune up match, had my girlfriend, her mother and her kids come up and spend four days running around Minnesota with me.

2) I got a new boss who is essentially rebuilding my department from the ground up. This is not a bad thing, but it certainly is making me do things in ways that take a lot more thought since I am not familiar with them.

3) Just to make my life complete and full of fun, had a friend lapse into a coma. Not just any friend mind you. This is the woman who gave me moral support during all of the kidney transplant stuff. She has suffered from various ailments her entire life and just when it looked like most of the issues had been dealt with, this happens. Life is bloody unfair. Anyway, I have been spending a fair amount of time in the hospital visiting with her.

So that's what's been going on with me. How's everyone else been?

Just in case you were wondering...

I am fine. I was nowhere near the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis yesterday. In fact, that bridge is the wrong direction for me to go to or from work. The only regular reason I would have to be on that bridge these days is if I were going from my office to a medical appointment, since all of those seem to be in downtown Minneapolis these days!

Thanks to the folks who have already contacted me asking how I am doing. It's good to know you have friends who think about you! :-)

Sorry for the long absence

It's been a while since I've posted and that is mostly because I have been busy as all get out at work and at home. I'll try to be a little more on top of things in the future.

Sad News

I found out that a friend of mine from College has died. I don't know much in the way of details yet, but I expect I will find out that information in the next couple of days.

I don't really know how to deal with this yet. It gives me a whole now prospective on my hospitalization last fall. If my friends and family were feeling anything like what's going on in my head right now, I feel like I should apologize for the next year or so for putting them through that, even though I know I had no control over it. This is the first time I have experienced the death of someone my age that I have known for a long time.

I guess I will post more when I know more.

Things I need to do before going to Jody and Adam's wedding

1) Go to my doctor's appointment on Friday
2) Get to Hair Police for dread maintenance
3) Unpack my old Dell Optiplex and recover the files I need from it
4) Actually finish listening to The City of the Dead radio drama

I'm sure there is more I need to do and I think I will add them to blog entries to keep myself reminded

Oh yeah! 5) Buy Adam and Jody a wedding Gift!!!!!!

I'm amused

the reason I am amused is that I am wearing a t-shirt a friend sent me recently (thanks JWIII) from the show "Spamalot" that says, simply: "I'm not dead yet" , which makes me laugh in a somewhat morbid way.

Weekend plans and comments on health

I talked to the doctor's office a few days ago and it appears that all is well. My creatinine is even edging down a bit to make the news even better.

I've decided it is time to start enjoying life a bit more. I think I am going to break out my bike this weekend and go riding around Lake Calhoun. It's supposed to be nice (unlike last weekend's rain-fest) and I think I could use the outdoor time as well as the exercise. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of regular rides again.

A good weekend

This has been a good weekend, despite having to go to work. I got to have breakfast with a couple of my buddies and it was quite a good time. I managed to get some household chores done, which might be the biggest surprise of all. And I managed to go to MicroCon (a local comic convention) and managed to stay under budget. not by much mind you, but I got some cool stuff and am quite happy with it.

Latest medical news

OK, so I talked to the doctor's office today and it appears that my creatinine is holding steady, which is not a bad thing I guess, but I would have loved to see it go down a bit after the steroid treatment. It looks like there is a lab error on one of my blood tests, so I have to go back and get that done again. Hopefully, it will not turn out to be something that actually requires some sort of treatment.

More fun with drugs

As of right now, it appears that my rejection episode is over. My creatinine level is stable (we'll see if it goes down) and most of my blood tests came back normal. The only thing that is making me a little cranky is that my blood sugar came back at about 350 on Monday, so they put me on something for that. Just what I needed, more drugs. I also found out today that they are upping my Prograf dose, from 4 to 5 mg. Nothing big, but I'd rather take less drugs than more.

I'll be going in on Tuesday for more blood tests, so we shall see how all this goes.

Yay, Steroids!

Well, I'm done with the IV steroids for my rejection episode. I got my last dose today and I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow to follow up on this. I'll post the results from that when I get them, most likely Monday afternoon, maybe Tuesday. There will be a post once I hear from the doctor.

Mild Acute rejection

I got the results from my biopsy yesterday and it appears that there is some rejection going on. I am now getting three days of big doses of steroids to make it go away. I am about to leave for the second dose right now.

I have a checkup on Monday at my doctor's office to see how things are going. Hopefully, I will be all better then. More as I know it.

Kidney Biopsy

I get to go in tomorrow (Thursday) for the biopsy. I also don't get to drive myself. I have been informed that I will not be allowed to drive myself home, so I am assuming there will be some sedation involved. This also means I get to miss an entire day of work. Hopefully, this will be one and done, rather than leading to lots of other visits to establishments staffed by many medical professionals.

I'll let you know how it comesout once I know.

It was too good to last.

It looks like my run of not having to go to the hospital is now over. I just got a call from my doctor telling me that they want to biopsy my kidney to verify that I am not going through a rejection episode. He said that it would be pretty mild even if I am, but that is not something I wanted to hear under any circumstances.

It appears that the creeping creatinine is what has got him worried. I get to go to the hospital later this week to get the biopsy done and see what happens after that. Hopefully, it will not be anything bad, but I'll post when I know more.

Creeping creatinine

According to the latest blood tests, my creatinine has nudged up to 1.8. This is not a big increase, but it does seem to be part of a slight upward trend over the last couple of months. I'll be going back in next week to get it re-tested. I guess we'll see if this is a minor blip or something to be concerned about then.

I would drive 500 Miles...

Well, I went to St. Louis and back with no major problems, mostly because my friend TK was there to help with the driving on the way back! I think I could get to like St. Louis a lot. It seems like a pretty nice town and JM has a great house. We'll see when I get to go down there next. It wont be anytime before the end of April since I am already going out of town at the end of next week and have a wedding in NYC to attend at the end of May. Gonna be a busy travel time over the next couple of months.

Eventful week

Well, last week was far more exciting than I expected it to be. I had to be out the door extra early pretty much every day! I had my IV Iron doses on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, a doctor's appointment for blood tests on Wednesday and an all company meeting on Thursday, all of which started at 8 am at latest. I remember why I always aim for getting in to work at around 9 now: traffic sucks at 7 am way more than it does a 8:15 am. :-)

To finish off the week, I bought a new HD (400 GB!) on Friday, discovered that it was defective during the LAN party I went to Saturday, and then went to my company's "Mid-winter Blues Party" Saturday night. On Sunday, I went to see 300. All in all, quite the fun weekend.

Hopefully this coming week will be a bit more quiet. Of course there is the part where I drive to St. Louis this weekend... :-)

Sitting around again

Well, I got my first IV iron on Thursday. It wasn't too bad. Evidently, my experience with dialysis has prepared my for this well. I was done with the IV in about an hour and I barely noticed it. I guess three years of sitting on my can for three hours, three times a week did me some good! :-)

I have three more sessions next week. I assume it will be as easy as this week's session.

Iron Man!

Looks like I don't get to avoid more needles. I have to get 4 doses of IV Iron starting this Thursday. Oh well, it's not like I haven't gotten lots of needles before. I guess I will survive these!

Before I forget again...

I heard back from the doctor's office and all appears to be well with my labs. I'm a little low on my hemoglobin, but they have been expecting that. I get to have an iron study done, and that will determine if I need to get fed some IV iron. Hopefully not, since as you all know, I hate needles, even now! :-)

I'm healthy!

I've been lax about posting to this blog mostly because nothing seems to be going wrong. The only thing that even raised a slight blip on the medical radar is that my creatinine level has been creeping up a bit, but not enough to cause my doctor to be worried about it.

I just went in for my regular labs today and I should find out the results later today or tomorrow. I'll let you know if anything is amiss.

All appears to be well.

As was pointed out to me last night, I've been a little lax about updating this blog. The reason for that is that everything has been going swimmingly. My white blood cell count is still in a reasonable range after last week's little episode. My blood pressure appears to be under control and even my potassium level is behaving itself. I'm not sure if I can deal with my health actually going right for a while, but we'll see! :-)

Work annoyances

I go through this every time Microsoft releases a new OS. I hate Vista. It is making my life really suck these days. To no one's surprise, MS has released this thing before it was ready for prime time. In the last week, I have had to deal with it in three different languages, two of which I obviously do not speak. I hate Vista.

Immune system issues

I had another episode of my white blood cell count dropping like a brick. I think I need to talk to my doctor about this. While I know that I am going to have a compromised immune system, I don't think I am supposed to have an immune system that yo-yos like this. It seems like I should not have to deal with this. Why is my body reacting to my medication by dropping my white blood cell count so drastically?

On the up side, they treated the drop with a medicine called Neupogen and it restored my WBC to an acceptable level in three days. The only real downside to this is that the drug is only available as an injection. Despite three years of Dialysis and a ridiculously high number of doctor visits and hospitalizations that involved either injections or blood draws, I am still afraid of needles. Having to give myself a shot, even for only three days, was about as close to my own personal hell as I ever want to get. I'd hate to think of what my life would be like if I ever developed diabetes...

Work is rolling along just fine

Well, it looks like I am going to be back up to full time at work even earlier than I thought. I've been putting in full days since last thursday and I have not been having any problems. Now all I have to do is manage to keep up with my to do list... :-)

Work and such

Everybody wish me luck. I go back to work after new year's. I think I can deal with a close to full time schedule, but we shall see.

Removal of extra parts!

Yay, the feeding tube is out and the trach will be coming out in about 6 hours. That will be the last of the extra parts that have been added to me over the last six months. I have lots of new and interesting scars, but I can finally say that I am all original again. Now all I have to do is to wait for the extra holes to close up. I'm quite happy about this!

Sleep Issues

In current minor good news, I am finally sleeping through the night. I have been having issues sleeping since I got out of the hospital. My only issue right now is that I am oversleeping these days. I wake up at 10am or so. This is only a problem because I am supposed to be taking my meds at 9am.

I'll take getting some sleep on a regular basis though.

More fun

You know, I think the world likes to mess with me. Every time I think things are going well, something comes along to ruin my day. It looks like I am having trouble with my feet swelling again and apparently, it is also messing with my lungs. They are bumping up my diuretic to clear this up. We'll see how it goes.

how am I doing now?

Just wanted to post an update here to let folks know how I am doing. I feel much stronger than I did when they let me out of the hospital. I think I am on track to return to work at the beginning of the year with no issues. I also will be getting my feeding tube removed next week, which is the last of the various tubes they put in m while in the hospital. The trach will be coming out the week after to complete the removal of all the things that got added to me over the last few months. Hopefully, nothing else will get put in...

Other than low potassium levels, it appears that all is going well for me these days.

I'll post more as doctor visits warrant.

Yes, it's true...

I'm home. They let me out of the hospital yesterday and I am trying to finish my recovery. I;m still a bit weak compared to before I went in, but I think I will get back to where I was.

Thank you all for the support you gave me while I was fighting to recover. I don't know what to say!

And the fun continues

Just to make my day even better, I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow morning (I already had one scheduled for the afternoon) because my white blood cell count keeps going down. They are not sure why, but it appears that there will be more tinkering with my drugs. Hope it helps, because this cold thing bites!

Just great..

I appear to have caught a cold. I wanna go home and go back to bed.

Mixed day

Well, it appears that my white blood cell count is going down and they figure they should do something about that. They are tinkering with my drugs and for the time being, I am just going to avoid people who look like they might be sick and wash my hands a whole lot. :-)

On the good side, my creatinine is down to 1.4, which is the lowest it has been since the transplant. Not sure what I did to bring it down, but I hope I keep doing it!

What's going on with my various appointments.

OK, before kt hurts me, here's how things stand: I went to my clinic appointment on Monday and they didn't do much about the drain there. The pain level has dropped quite a bit. I am managing it just fine with moderate doses of tylenol (instead of the Percocet I thought I was going to have to use).

They also sent me to see yet another doctor about the status of the drain and I am not really sure what he was doing this for. As far as I can tell, He just changed the dressing, and looked at the drain insert point and said "it's all good" and sent me on my way. I assume he is just going to be monitoring how things are going but I'm not entirely sure how he is going to be doing that. I have another appointment with him next week, so I guess I will ask for clarification.

The drain is going to be there for the time being. I am outputting about a liter of fluid a day through the drain and they are not going to take it out until I am down to about 100 ml a day. It's going to be a while before this comes out.

And the tally rises

Well, the CT Scan count now goes up by 1. I called my doctor's office today because of some serious pain in my left side that started last night. It made for an interesting night of attempted sleep. After talking amongst themselves, they sent me back to the hospital to see if the drain had dislodged itself or done something else rude that might be causing the pain, but it appears that is not the case. The radiologist says that it is in there, where it is supposed to be, and doesn't know what is causing the pain.

Anyway, I have to finish some work related stuff here at the office and then it is off to home and some serious painkillers and my bed! I am hoping that this whole pain thing is a short term thing and it will go away in the next few days. If it doesn't, at least I have a doctor's appointment on Monday and they can try to diagnose it a little better.

Where I've been...

OK, I guess I let folks know what the heck is s going on with me these days.

First and foremost, it appears that I had somehow dislodged the drainage tube sometime on Wednesday. This, as you might guess, caused some consternation amongst the medical types. Mind you, it took a CT Scan to determine that this had occurred (and for those who are counting, the current tally is 4 Ultrasounds, 1 X-Ray and 2 CT Scans). I had an outpatient procedure to remove the old tube and replace it with a new one yesterday. This would not have been that big a deal, except that someone scheduled it wrong. I showed up at 9 AM on Thursday (after some horrific traffic) to find out that they thought I was going to be showing up on Friday and had fully booked the surgeons for the day. After some running around and rescheduling, they managed to get me in later in the day. The actual procedure was pretty straight-forward and uncomplicated. The new drain appears to be working fine. We'll see how long before something else goes weird.

All of this nonsense also caused me top miss a doctor's appointment. Not a big deal, but that's the first time I missed one.

Work has also been keeping me busy as hell. I have either been at work, the doctor's (or the hospital) or at home for every waking moment this week. I need to slow down a bit.

Visible improvement

For the first time in weeks, both of my feet are their normal size. I seem to have lost most of the weight gained when the edema thing started. My only current problem is that the drain seems to be cranking out at a high rate still. While it has slowed down some, it is still not at a level where they are comfortable taking it out. Hopefully this will get better soon.

Update

I realized that I have been slacking on this for the last few days, mostly because nothing traumatic has happened! :-)

After my last clinic appointment on Thursday, it appears that my doctors are going to try and wait out this drain thing. It went into overdrive for a few days, dumping out something like 1.5-2.5 liters of fluid ever 24 hours. The scary part was that the edema in my leg continued to get bigger. It looks like it is finally slowing down to a reasonable pace (less than 1 liter per 24 hours) and hopefully will continue to slow down over the next few days.

I think the best evidence that good things are happening is that I have lost close to 10 pounds since they put the drain in. I always forget just how much excess fluid weighs! You would think 3 years of dialysis would have taught me that, but what can I say, I thought I didn't have to deal with that so much anymore.

The long weekend has allowed me to spend some quality time off of my feet, which has helped the edema quite a bit. I also went out and bought myself a pair of the compression stockings to wear to help that out some more. As of yesterday, I can finally close the strap on my Tevas again for the first time in about 10 days. I was quite excited about that.
I look quite silly walking around in Tevas and white stocking-like socks, but what the hell, it makes my legs feel much better.

I think that's about it health-wise, so I am going to go play some video games now! :-)

Hospital woes

When the staff at the hospital starts greeting you with questions like "you live here now, don't you?", you have officially spent too damned much time in that hospital! :-)

Weekend update

Quick update on my life over the last few days, cause it's been busy!

As a result of my Thursday clinic appointment, they discovered that my creatinine level had gone up from 1.5 to 2.1 over the course of three days. They sent me to the hospital on Friday to have an ultrasound done to see what, if anything might be causing that. They discovered a large fluid buildup around the new kidney and my doctor decided that something needed to be done about that pretty much right away. I then got to spend the weekend in the hospital while they put a tube into my side to drain the fluid. It appeared that it had stopped draining, but when they did another ultrasound, they found some more fluid that didn't seem to want to come out. There didn't seem to be much they could do at this point without further surgery, so they decided to send me home, but without removing the drain.

Of course, overnight, the excess fluid seems to have decided to come out. From Saturday at 10pm to Sunday at 6pm, the drain produced less than 200ml of fluid. From the time I left the hospital at about 6 until 8am on Monday, it has already dumped out about 400ml of fluid. Hopefully, it will slow down in the next day or so.

On top of all of this, there was some fun with my drugs. They dropped a number of drugs and it seems that they forgot some of my drugs. It took me two days to get all of this sorted out. Just in time to be released from the hospital. I hope I have gotten all of the changes right, but I guess I'll find out today when I go to my clinic appointment.

I guess I will update more later today after I get the results of the blood tests.

Stent Removal Aftermath

OK, if I never, EVER have to do that agin, I will only be too happy.

First full day back...

Went well. I managed to put in a full day and went through a big chunk of the installer testing on our new release. Filed a few bugs and apparently found some interesting bugs.

The only downside is that sitting at my desk all day made for a slightly more swollen ankle and foot. Hopefully this wont go on for too long.

I also am going to be getting the stent removed from my kidney tomorrow. Not that I want it to stay in there, I am more than a little nervous about *how* it is supposed to come out of me. I'm not sure I really want anesthetic on that portion of my anatomy and I sure as heck don't want anything going in that way, even to remove something. This is almost worse than the whole Foley catheter thing. :-)

Back at it!

As of today, I am back at work! The doctor gave me the OK to return to work and I leaped at it. I am now hip deep in installer testing for our new version and hopefully will make a useful contribution to the development of this thing! It feels so good to be back doing something useful, I don't know what to say!

Recent adventures

It looks like they have finally gotten a handle on this edema thing. I foot is still swelling a small amount, but nothing like it was a few days ago. Mind you, I am visiting the restroom almost as often as I was right after I got out of the hospital, but it is so nice to not have my left foot be twice it's normal size.

The rest of it seems to be going along swimmingly. Hopefully, I will get the OK to go back to work sometime next week and I can get out of this boring rut I have been in...

More tests needed

I went in for an ultrasound on my leg yesterday. They were checking for clots that might be causing the edema in my leg. It appears that there is nothing in there, which is good, but this means that they do not know what is causing it. They thought it was the drugs, but now that those have been changed, it appears that it is something else. Hopefully, they will have a better idea of what is going on when I go in for my clinic appointment on Friday.

On a related note, my potassium is up to a decent level. Not enough to stop taking the horse pills they have me on now, but it is an improvement. My creatinine is currently at 1.6 and holding. They actually reduced the phosphorus supplements since that was going up. Nice to know it is actually possible that they can take away some of the pills. :-)

More drug changes

Oh happy day! It appears that my potassium level is actually up to something respectable! It's been years since it was that way on it's own! Hopefully it will stay there and allow them to reduce the amount of potassium I am taking. Those things are freaking horse pills!

They also reduced the amount of phosphorous I am taking. It was getting high again, so finally something that reduces the number of pills instead of increasing it.

It appears that they are not done dinking with the blood pressure meds though. They upped the Diovan and the Lasix in an attempt to bring my BP under control as well as control the edema in my leg. I ended up spending most of the day on the couch trying to get the swelling to go down. Kind of boring, but we'll see how it goes.

Also, my creatinine level is down to 1.5. Hopefully this will continue. I have not actually gotten the results from the blood tests today, so we shall see if that results in more changes.

More contact needed...

I think I need to talk to more people in the near future. I think I have been getting a little too insular sitting here staring at the TV and my computer all damned day. I need to get out more!
:-)

If you feel the urge, give me a call sometime!

More drug changes

Well, I am off of Norvasc. It was not helping my BP enough and the side effects (edema and high pulse) were kind of troublesome. They have put me back on the medication I was on before the transplant and preliminary observations make it look like a good idea. The BP is not quite where it should be, but it is slightly improved and my pulse has dropped something like 30 BPM. I can't tell on the edema yet since it is usually better in the morning, but for now it looks like it is better than it has been. I'll see how it is by this evening.

Update

OK, the edema seems to be getting better. I hope it continues, but for now I'm counting myself lucky that my leg isn't twice it's normal size! :-)

I'm still having some issues with my blood pressure. Hopefully they will do something about that when I go in for my clinic appointment tomorrow.

I'm also going to be trying to convince my doctor to let me go back to work at least part-time. Hopefully, this will let me save a little vacation time so that I can actually travel at the end of the year to visit my Mom like I usually do.

Other than a little soreness around the midsection, I'm feeling really good. Hopefully the next round of tests will agree with how I feel.

Get well KR

Stopped by to see A and KR. It looks like she's having a bad time of it. Get well soon! It pains me to see you feeling bad!

Health musings

Creatinine is still at 1.7 but everything else seems to be doing well. More to know when I go in for my next appointment on Thursday.

Also, I am down to twice a week clinic visits instead of three times a week. This is a good thing!

I'm also managing to get some work in so that I am not being bored out of my mind sitting at home...

Test results!

Creatinine is down to 1.7! It looks like the kidney is pretty close to fully operational!

I appear to still have some vitamin/mineral deficiencies, but they are working on those. Unfortunately, those pills are the huge horse-pill variety. Not a lot of fun to take! :-)

My hemoglobin is creeping up as well. Hopefully this means that I will not have to get EPO injections for too much longer.

We'll see if things continue to improve when I go in for my appointment on Monday!

As the world turns..

Today was sorta blah, sorta fine. I did pretty much nothing all day but hang around try to keep myself occupied. I suspect that if I don't get back to work sometime soon, I am going to go stark raving mad!!!

Ok, I'm good now. I'll stop complaining! :-)

Creatinine notes

The most recent blood tests (Monday) show my creatinine is down to 2.2! The kidney is getting along just great! Now if only I could get my potassium and calcium up...

More Edema

Well, they have put me on a diuretic for now to help with the edema. It seems to be doing the job. I have been hitting the bathroom lock clockwork all day and the swelling is noticeably less than it was yesterday with only minimal differences in the amounts I am drinking. Hopefully this will continue and eventually my new kidney will be able to keep up with the demands!

Finally met the guy...

I finally met my new Nephrologist this morning. The office has separate practices for pre- and post-transplant patients and once I got the new kidney, they switched me to a new guy. The problem is that his wife had a baby shortly thereafter and he is now on leave to be with his wife and the new baby. Since he is going to be gone for a while they switched me to another doctor. :-)

I have to say, I like the new guy. Good bedside manner, seems like a nice guy. Seems pretty knowledgeable without being a know-it-all. We'll see how it goes over the next few months.

On a side note, my creatinine level is down to 2.2!! The kidney is definitely kicking in!