Boom, like that.

I've mentioned it before, but you might have forgotten - Mr Half Soled Boots suffers from chronic renal insufficiency, and in 2006 had a kidney transplant. My sister donated to him. My father-in-law has the same disease (Polycystic Kidney Disease) and had a transplant 20 or so years ago. Shortly after Mr HSB's transplant, his dad's graft failed. He has been on automated peritoneal dialysis since then, and six months ago was deemed healthy enough to be put on the transplant list in Ontario.

Today was my FIL's birthday. Just after we phoned to wish him many happy returns, he called us back: the hospital in London had paged him - they have a kidney for him. He goes in at 5.30 tomorrow morning (January 20) and, if the final tests all go well, he'll have a new kidney by tomorrow night.

If you have a minute to pray for him, wish him well, or cross whatever you usually cross, that would be great. I'd appreciate it.

I'll let you know what happens...and also Pssst.....consider becoming an organ donor.

==================

ETA: David waited 15 hours for an OR to open up, and went into surgery at 9.00 PM. The kidney was a 'perfect match'...all went well, and he is in recovery...

Celebrate, Commemorate

Today is May 29, Ian and Gwen's two-year anniversary.

Thank you Gwen. Thanks for keeping our family alive.

From Bad to Better

A man barely alive. We can(not) rebuild him. We (don't) have the technology. We can(not) make him better than he was.
- adapted by Me.


All right, troops: the diagnosis is in.


FINALLY.

The biopsy showed "significant rejection", which I suppose means that it had gone quite far. It also means that the treatment they chose to administer was correct. The steroids will continue for about six months or so, gradually tapering off.

Doc says it was not "vascular rejection" which apparently is the worst one. So, yay for the second worst! Woo hoo!

It will take a long time for them to determine whether the kidney will heal or scar. Healing is good, scarring is less good. I guess there will be an ultrasound at some future point to check this.

From now on, his creatinine baseline will be higher than it was before, since some irreparable damage has been done.

Finally, Doc says "we have no idea what caused it and we have no idea whether it will happen again."

In case you are dying to know more.

And now, a few things to look at. This might be my concession to Random Wednesday... (Watch out - there are two scary pictures in this sequence.)

Gyrid front.

My butt. (Scary picture number one.) I bought some new capris but I'm worried they might be too girly for me. See? Flowers.

This one is for all those people who might be thinking I am exaggerating about the boldness of the deer around here. This one is less than two meters from my kids, and he is not even running. He was just browsing for some apples I had thrown in the compost. Bold as BRASS.

A West-Coast (read: huge) spider. (Scary picture number two.) I turned her over while recycling some more concrete debris into my garden. There you see her egg sac beside her. After taking this picture I ran inside to get my measuring tape and managed to lay it beside her without disturbing her. She was sitting squarely with her back legs at the 5", and her front legs at the 7". I lifted the camera to take the picture and BAM! she skittered off as fast as her legs could carry her (pretty darn fast when it's a 2" long spider).

My little friend. I tried to get a picture of him perched on the concrete edge of my new island bed (his favourite spot for worm-recon), but he had other ideas. I had to settle for a grass shot.

"Trouble Comes in Threes"

First, on Wednesday last, Mr HSBoots got a call from the renal clinic after his routine bloodwork, to tell him he appeared to be in "acute transplant rejection". We worried for two days while more tests were done, then they phoned again to tell him to please be in Victoria in a few hours to be admitted there for biopsy and treatment.

I took him there on Friday, returning the same day to be with the kids.

On Saturday I planted like mad. The moon was in 1st phase Cancer, after all.

Today, I packed up the kids and headed back to Victoria. We saw their dad for dinner (he feels fine, by the way - no symptoms) then took him back to the hospital.

While playing in the waiting area, three-year-old Emily tripped mid-run, and went headfirst into a steel chair, laying open her forehead to the bone.

It was maybe the quickest trip to emergency ever.

I've never seen so much blood.

We sat in ER for 90 minutes while they treated a drunken softball player who had stepped on a ball and hurt her ankle.

Em had 6 stitches and a vomiting episode, then I gathered up my poor children, said goodbye to my husband who headed back to the renal unit, and made my way downtown to the hotel.

I broke down a bit at the hotel, crying for a few minutes. I feel unqualified for this job, now. And afraid of what might happen to my children. I may turn into one of those mothers who says "Oh, be careful! Don't run there! Don't climb that!" But I don't want to see her skull anymore, nor that little bubble of fat layer protruding from a 3/4 inch gash.

I got the blood out of Emily's hair, washed her face, chest, hands and arms, and my own face, neck, hands and arms. I got everybody settled into bed, Tylenol at the ready on the nightstand, for when Em wakes up in a few hours screaming with the pain. After a struggle with yet more tears, I fell into an exhausted sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, I was awakened by the sound of something being chewed, right under the head of my bed. When I finally got up the nerve to get right down on the floor and look under the bed, I met our roommate. Just a mouse, not a rat.

But still.

I have just finished moving all our belongings and two heavily sleeping children into another room. This one is across the hall, looking over Blanshard Street rather than the courtyard with the quietly playing fountain.

To add insult to injury, upon arriving at the hotel tonight I got my........um.......well, I'll just say moon dark was two nights ago. If you know what I mean.

I don't know whether the mouse counts as the third of the three, or just as comic relief. I hope it's the former.

For those of you who may know in what hotel I can be found, I'm in 212 now, not 203.

And yes, in case you're wondering, I am worried, nervous, tearful, exhausted, and terrified. I just want to go home.

East, West, Home's Best

Well, I've been away. Now I'm back - 3200 kilometres later. Wanna see some sights?

We stopped in Williams Lake for the night and stayed there barely 12 hours, just long enough for Emily to work up the courage to pat Donovan.



When we left Williams Lake, it was finally time to give Holly Hobbie to Charlotte. Here she is a few hours later: "Show me how you feel about your Design My Style dolls!"



The Seven Sisters, as seen through the bug-spattered windshield at 140 kms/hour. But I knew better than to suggest we stop for something as paltry as enjoying the scenery. When Mr HalfSoledBoots is on a road trip, it is the destination that matters - the journey is of supreme insignificance.


The hustle and bustle of downtown New Hazelton.




But though they may not have much, they do have this, which you have to admit is impressive:



Most of the drive is through fairly flat country - quite a few ranches, long loooooong trains, and even some areas of taiga. Mr HSBoots is a man of few words, so I whiled away the hours, as the children watched Tom and Jerry on the two-screen travel DVD player (LIFESAVER), by working on my Sockapalooooza sock. Therefore, the scenery I saw was about 40% this:


and 60% this:


When we set out, I had done the ribbing and one lace repeat. By the time we got to our destination, I just had to knit the toe and graft it.

More on the sock in the next post. In the meanwhile, I conquered a new skill while at my sister's, where they have (gasp!) a trampoline. I love trampolines. And now, after 25 or so years of wishing I could do something better than a seat drop, I can add this to my resume of life:


We finally made our way home night-before-last, and this coastal girl was pretty happy to be back among the familiar.


I think Em agrees with me. After three days of whining and tearfulness, she gave me this look while on our beloved BC Ferry:


So that's your little glimpse of beautiful British Columbia. I hope you liked it. I will leave you with one last image from the Coastal Mountain Range. In the next installment I will introduce my Sockapalooooza socks properly, and maybe bring you up to date on the garden, which flourished in my absence due to a sudden lack of cloud.
_________________________

Thanks for your words on the transplant post. Since the transplant, and even more since your comments on the anniversary post, I am newly aware of the tenuous grasp each of us has on this fleeting life, and of the utter sameness of each life to the others. Our apparent differences are in fact circumstantial - at their core, humans all fear, long for, and treasure the same things.

No Greater Love

One year ago today, my family gathered in a waiting room at St Paul's Hospital while my sister lay on a gurney in OR. She was nervous, nauseated, and blinking back tears of fear, waiting for the anaesthesiologist to put her to sleep.

Dr Gourlay spent the next three hours removing her left kidney, while my husband was being prepped for surgery. We stood in a tight little knot - my mother, my sister's husband, my husband's parents, brother and sister - and watched the swinging door until the surgeon came through with the anaesthesiologist and the two surgical interns to tell us that Gwen's surgery was successful and they could proceed with the next step.

I said goodbye to my husband, and he went through those same doors, pale and shaking. We waited another three hours until beautiful, wonderful, celestial Dr Gourlay came through again to tell us that all was well - not only was Mr HalfSoledBoots successfully slashed, repaired, and closed back up, but the transplanted kidney had started working before he was even awake.

I spent the next seven days in an agony of sympathy as my husband recovered rapidly, hardly used his morphine, and regained colour he had been slowly losing for years as PKD ravaged his body - meanwhile my sister, two rooms down, suffered terrible pain and shock in the aftermath of surgery, as her body struggled to overcome the trauma of losing an organ.


I've been emotional lately. I've had lots of unexplainable and staggeringly uncharacteristic crying episodes, various aches and pains, and the complexion of a 16 year old pizza delivery boy. It was only yesterday that I realized why these things are happening...it's the anniversary of some of my darkest days. I have come back around to that place on the spiral of my life when I feared the worst for both my husband and my sister. I didn't know who to pull for - I remember making a joke to the surgeon at one point: "we've discussed it, and if you only have enough bandaids for one person, save Gwen."

Within ten days of the surgery, Mr HSBoots was at 65% function. Within a few months, Gwen was over 90%...her remaining kidney had increased its function to compensate for the missing one. Now, at one year, everyone is healthy, everyone is happy, and my life has changed in ways I never imagined it would. It came on so slowly that I didn't realize how sick he was until he wasn't anymore.

We changed our will so that if the children are not in a position to benefit from our estate when we die, Gwen gets everything. We bought her quite a few thank-you presents, paid her travel and accommodation expenses, bought her some spa treatments before the transplant, and at Christmas she made out like a bandit. And yet? we'll never do enough for her. There's no thanking a person for this gift.

Gwen, you changed everything. Along with your kidney you gave my children back their father, you gave me back my husband, you gave Sandra and David back their son.

God bless you.