From the moment I was diagnosed with kidney disease, I began to see doctor after doctor. One specialist I would see would be the one with all the expertise on nutrition.
I had low calcium. I had low iron, anaemia. I needed to take supplements. I was put on dialysis. I was under weight and malnourished. My body wasn’t getting any of the proper nutrients it needed. The kidney disease was preventing anything healthy from happening in my body.
From then on I saw the dietician, who told me what foods to stay away from. Then, once I’d had my kidney transplant, I saw one again, who told me I was to basically eat the opposite of all I was to stay away from while on dialysis.
It was confusing. It was confusing, going from fighting to keep any weight on to being on high doses of medications which put on weight.
Food has been a major factor for me, something I had to think about, since I was eleven years old. I fought like hell to be healthy, but I never dreamed that nutrition would be such a difficulty for me.
Now, I am on such low doses of those transplant medications, but the damage has been done. My body has been through a lot.
I try to find balance. I love salad and I love chocolate. I could live on fruit and vegetables, but I love my pizza. I love to drink water and still I drink Coke.
This nutrition thing is hard and I don’t see it getting any easier, the older I get.
***This is my first year of joining the A to Z Challenge and so I’ve decided to post randomly, as a way for new visitors to my blog to get to know me a little better. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.
It was a slow day And the sun was beating On the soldiers by the side of the road There was a bright light A shattering of shop windows The bomb in the baby carriage Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder This is the long distance call The way the camera follows us in slo-mo The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation That’s dying in a corner of the sky These are the days of miracle and wonder And don’t cry baby, don’t cry Don’t cry
It was a dry wind And it swept across the desert And it curled into the circle of birth And the dead sand Falling on the children The mothers and the fathers And the automatic earth
“The Boy in the Bubble” discusses starvation and terrorism, but mixes this with wit and optimism. Simon concurred with this assessment: “Hope and dread – that’s right. That’s the way I see the world, a balance between the two, but coming down on the side of hope.”
Hope and dread. Hope and dread. Hope and dread. These things run through my head…my head…my head.
My nephew is learning so many new things at school, even already after his first few weeks.
How do I know this?
The other night at dinner he started asking about carrots and how they grow, in the earth, from seeds. Such a basic concept of a lovely natural process.
Seeds planted. Something growing, sprouting up, from once there was only dirt under foot.
I am thankful for all the time I got to spend with my aunt.
Her life is a mystery to me. I get stuck on trying to imagine it. I only knew her for the last few decades of her life.
She was my father’s half sister. She was born in Europe during World War II. She came here to Canada, all by herself. I will forever wonder about all that.
The last time I saw her, as herself, she had made the trip to her mother’s funeral. We didn’t think she would come, for several reasons, but she came and I was nervous to give my tribute to my oma, whose relationship with her daughter was different from ours.
I hugged my aunt, after a day at the graveside, and an evening reminiscing about the life Oma lived, all of us sitting on the deck, around a table. I hugged her and left.
The next time she would have faced tumour treatments, her brain badly effected. She clung to me, our last real moment of contact, and one more familial thread is lost..
Without my parents making a decision to introduce us, I would never have known her mighty spirit.
I am thankful for the light chatter of young voices on a hard day of reality confronted.
On the night we received the news, I heard a one-year-old playing lovingly with her doll (all thanks to WhatsApp) and I interrupted a family in the middle of their beloved spaghetti dinner.
I needed to hear these little people, to remember that there are beginnings as well as those endings we wish would never come.
Na na na na na na na na Max Man!
🙂
Thanks to speaker phone, we discussed colours, what we want to be when we grow up, and what our favourite foods are.
I sat back, listening to my niece describe all manner of shades of many many colours. I needed that just then.
I am thankful for a world attempting to live more peacefully.
Justin Trudeau spoke about what “Canada has gotten right, not perfect.” That we believe diversity brings us strength to fight hatred and violence.
With all the meetings of UN in New York through the week, I listened to several speeches, President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau in particular. All still so complicated. Peace exists in pockets. I just happen to live in one of those at the moment. No guarantee it will always be that way.
I am thankful for another educational Ken Burns PBS documentary.
I was unaware of the story of this couple.
I am thankful for a room full of writers
I had a question about writing, about the writing journey we’re all on, and I thought who better to bring it to than that select group of people. They are just learning as they go along, just like me, and I wanted their take on a particular situation I’ve gotten myself into.
Their input did not totally squelch my concerns, but we did have a lively discussion about writing contests and when a scam is a scam. I did not want to bring down the other writer in the group to have received good news like myself. He may choose to go a different way with it, but I am still undecided. We all want our writing to have a chance out there in the wider world.
This sort of thing is not visible to me anymore as such, but just hearing this scientist’s enthusiasm made me believe in the hope of all that magic to be found, especially in the ocean.
I am thankful for the perfect autumn weather.
Thursday was nearly thirty degrees. It was humid but yet there was a coolish breeze, enough to make a meal out on a patio still rather lovely. Yep, there was at least one bee this time, but not on me. Not that I knew of anyway.
I wasn’t having a great week. I was feeling unwell and having more computer troubles. I wanted the first day of fall to feel like fall.
By Friday the temperature had dropped ten degrees or more. I was in Heaven. Fall had arrived.
I am thankful for speedy and readily available medical care for myself and for those I love.
I felt lousy, but I needed blood taken and tested. I got it. Results available online now and oh how far we’ve come, to be able to check our own blood levels, without having to ask any doctor.
Then my family needs treatment for chronic medical conditions, tests run to check out symptoms, diabetes, and diet changes are called for. Hopefully those I love can remain healthy and live for a long time still.
I am thankful for a lovely day on the go.
It began at a secondhand store. Not exactly my kind of place, as I have a strange aversion to old, used things. I am also drawn to their stories. My sister was shopping for maternity clothes, not as easy as it sounds.
We kept my nephew occupied in the halloween decorations section, specifically interested in a doorbell with an eye that opened and and a voice that cackled.
We had lunch at a “pizza store” as my four-year-old nephew refers to it. All you can eat, but still we ate thin crust pizza, to stick, as close as we possibly can, to our diets and health restrictions.
Then I had my violin lesson. Brahms’ lullaby, played for me on piano and violin, so hopefully I can master the entire song by next March.
I went, with my brother and a few people, to attend a bit of speaking about video game production and radio.
This guy, the one with the website, he has been on a Toronto radio station for years. My brother listened to his radio programs. We heard he was visiting and we decided to go and listen to what he had to say.
Finally, we walked downtown, a Beatles festival happening, and capped off the day with a relaxing glass of wine and delicious dessert on a patio and then a cup of coffee, latte, before I felt a sore throat coming on dampen my mood. Nothing could truly dampen my first Saturday of fall.
I am thankful for an album, which becomes an experience in itself.
This album was brought back to my attention, but this week it has great value, in its overall feeling of hope and peace.
It is a magical record, full of the voice of Paul Simon, but yet with a distinctly African tone. Anyone who has never heard it has been missing out.
These days albums in their entirety are all but extinct. Songs that stand alone are what gets the public’s attention. This album, named for a tourist attraction, a musical and cultural icon of a place, a spiritual experience for some, that is what this album is for me.
It’s a collection of songs, taking me on travels, experiences of sorts, to a place called Africa, where my young self couldn’t imagine. This album was playing in our house, thanks to my father, and this can clearly be heard on an old home movie when I was three.
There was the almost mystical affection and strange familiarity I felt when I first heard South African music. Later, there was the visceral thrill of collaborating with South African musicians onstage. Add to this potent mix the new friendships I made with my band mates, and the experience becomes one of the most vital in my life. block quote level 1block quote level 1
I did not want to visit Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, so much as I wanted to learn about South Africa, about the troubles and the ruining of lives Apartheid caused, when I was too young to realize, when the concept of black and white wasn’t something I thought anything about. Now I think about it often. No superiority. No ranking of human life.
What was unusual about Graceland is that it was on the surface apolitical, but what it represented was the essence of the antiapartheid in that it was a collaboration between blacks and whites to make music that people everywhere enjoyed. It was completely the opposite from what the apartheid regime said, which is that one group of people were inferior. Here, there were no inferiors or superiors, just an acknowledgement of everybody’s work as a musician. It was a powerful statement. block quote level 1block quote level 1
Graceland transcended racial and cultural barriers. ” Graceland was never just a collection of songs, after all; it was a bridge between cultures, genres and continents, not to mention a global launching pad for the musicians whose popularity been suppressed under South Africa’s white-run apartheid rule,” said Andrew Leahey of
American Song Writer.
Don’t you ever just feel like telling the world to, “Bite Me!” Reality really can bite sometimes.
“I’m here for my appointment,” I said, approaching the window in the doctor’s office.
“Kerry?”
“Yes.”
“That was yesterday actually.”
The receptionist said this, without sounding at all annoyed at this latest inconvenience of her precious time, but I would find out later that it happened a few times a week usually. In fact, one girl came in after me, only to learn she was, in fact, a day early for her scheduled appointment.
Immediately I felt like crying. I couldn’t believe I’d done that. I’d checked the card, several times over the last few months, and I swore I had the right day. Maybe they’d written it down wrong. Maybe this wasn’t my mistake at all, but theres instead. Maybe?
I wouldn’t normally have felt like bursting into tears over something like this, but I hadn’t slept well, fallen to sleep after finding out another terrorist attack had taken place, and even the death of a famous Toronto mayor, of cancer, this had contributed to my state of sensitivity.
I don’t know. Something about the situation I was in, the coming together of the events already that morning, it all felt kind of unreal.
“Really?” I said. “Thank you very much.”
The receptionist must have taken pity on me. “It’s her OB morning, but I can squeeze you in somewhere.”
“Oh thank you very much,” I said, grateful I wasn’t going to leave without finding out what my test results were, without getting a chance to speak with the doctor about my situation.
I took my seat, preparing to wait as long as possible, as I knew I was lucky to still be seen. All around me, women were arriving, being weighed and getting their blood pressure taken, being shown to exam rooms to see the doctor for their varied, so-and-so month checkups, all in different stages of pregnancy. Here they were. I didn’t know their stories and they didn’t know mine, but I began to feel out-of-place and silly amongst them.
One woman came out to meet her husband and young child. I wondered about all the women there alone vs the one there with, likely, her supportive partner. But maybe the other fathers had to work and couldn’t get off. Who knew. None of us truly knew another’s life and circumstances. That would, likely, be too much of a weight to carry anyway…even more than any fetus.
Speaking of unborn babies, I wanted to cry, at the realities and the uncertainties. But I wasn’t going to cry, there, in front of all those pregnant and expecting mothers, some already mothers, whose hormones and the huge event to soon happen to them actually had more of a physical reason to burst into tears than I had.
But of course I had a reason, my reasons, several reasons, but I didn’t do it, not there in front of everyone, receptionist and patients, in that waiting room on a Tuesday.
I wasn’t there, on that OB morning, for the same reasons as everyone else and I didn’t think I ever would be. I really really didn’t know what I felt about that likelihood.
Forty-five minutes later, I left still wanting to cry. So many things about that day felt unreal to me. Yet another global terrorist attack. Yet another life taken too soon from cancer.
And as for myself, I was sick of yet another symptom with nothing causing it. No blood test or examination result could be connected to how I was feeling. I’d stumped yet another medical professional, but I definitely wasn’t there for the same happy, blessed occasion as the rest.
I’d been through this before. Really had enough. Really sick of it. Real ridiculous. No, really.
So, the list of the unreal grows and grows and grows.
It’s really unreal that certain people are in the running for the US presidency.
It’s so unreal to me that people, the book buying public, that they seem to require life to be spoon fed to them, as someone pointed out to me how unlikely any publisher is to want a memoir when they can have yet another how-to.. diet or get-rich success story.
Her Headache 