Susan Jacks concert/ organ donor awarenss event in Victoria

Team Embody Life Fitness helped represent me at the Susan Jacks kidney foundation benefit concert at UVic in Victoria, BC, Canada last night.  We wanted to show our appreciation for Susan stepping forward and raising more awareness and funds for the kidney foundation.  Every time we go to these events, we recognize all of the ways that we can be involved as a team in helping this issue.  We observed the silent auction to prepare for our own upcoming silent auction on May 5, 2012.  More details to come.  We had a great opportunity to share this new video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYT177TqDI4

We shared it with Susan Jacks' manager and team, with 98.5 Ocean radio station here in Victoria and with the BC Chapter of the Kidney Foundation.

Thanks so much to Susan Jacks' manager, Esmond Shong for allowing us the opportunity to meet with her in a special VIP reception after the concert.  It was very gracious and kind of you.  We look forward to future collaborations with this team to get the awareness about the donor situation in Canada out there.  We want to change things so that all Canadians are born donors.

I had the privilege of speaking with and meeting Susan and telling her my story of how I got to this point of being on dialysis and that I definitely appreciate the hope that she shone on my story as I don't have a kidney donor and I am waiting - sometimes it gets pretty dark, but I have to remain positive.  Hopefully at some point someone will come forward with an O blood type kidney to save my life.

Really enjoyed the music, all of the band members and the special guests that came in to sing.  It was a real privilege and an honour to come in as someone with my illness and enjoy it with my Embody Life Fitness team.  Thanks to everyone who came out - Jane, Ricki, Wendy, Elissa, Spiro, Daphne, Susan, Keith and Nicole!

Blue Skies Passing Through my Soul

After a painful Monday during dialysis, a blown fistula that had my spirit deflated, I have had the opportunity to go to the gym to train, 2 hours this morning, train another client, reach out to the positives and fill my happy gas tank.  I'm grateful for this part of my life, when I'm getting down and not feeling well, I can head to the gym.  The gym gives me happiness and keeps me distracted from this process of dialysis and kidney failure.  I will become the face of this, however, I would rather not be the face of this journey.  I'm looking forward to better training this week, more succes this week, and reaching out to all the Canadians that we can reach to try to get people aware of the organ donor concept that is done here in Canada, which is representing us as a whole.  In Canada, we have to opt-in different than in Spain where people opt-out.  So please share this.  If anyone has any suggestions about how to raise more awareness, please join our team. 

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See the links a the bottom of this blog for more information about the BC Kidney Foundation and Embody Life Fitness (under construction).

Get out and get moving - fill your happy gas tanks!  Life can be a beautiful process when the gas tanks of happiness are full!

The Yo-Yo Effect

Woke up today and had a nice workout and enjoyed my health smoothie designed for a dialysis patient.  Then I prepared myself for the first training session of the morning.  Had a great time with mentoring a new personal trainer and then I went to dialysis.  Now 2 out of 4 times have blown my fistula where the blood pools inside my arms and it swells up the size of a grapefruit, which causes a lot of pain and mentally is depressing because it makes me have to rest the fisula for another week before they can start double-needling me again.  This means a longer period before I can get my catheter out, and I can start training in the water, without so much strain on my fistula.  The nurse feels bad about this and I feel bad for the nurse, however, I also feel very frustrated with the process.  And with this frustration, leads to anger and then sadness.  However, I cannot allow myself to have much time feeling sad because it doesn't help me.  So I have to turn the chip over and ask for brightness which allows me to be happy.