Pre-Transplant Assessment Trip to Vancouver

After a restless night, emotionally I was exhausted thinking about getting a passing grade at this kidney assessment, my day started out pretty emotional.  I shed a few tears about how overwhelming this can all be for one person.  After gently putting my emotional state back together, I walked over to St. Paul's Hospital.  I went through the pre-assessment tour.

The first part was meeting with a nurse to talk about medications and various parts of my life and health.  I was very grateful to have Dr. Jane Gair there with me, not only for support, but to also ask the right questions.  She could think of things that I may not have been able to think about.

Next, we went to go see Dr. Gill.  He explained all aspects of the transplant process, checked in about my health, explaining the donor process, that the A blood type only has to wait 1-2 years while the O blood type has to wait 10-12 years.  This certainly makes it a bit darker when you hear things like this.  I could feel myself starting to well up - you start thinking about your future rather than hanging on to your faith.

We learned a few great things.  We found out that donors actually live longer than the average person.  This is likely due to the fact that they are screened so well and are therefore very healthy people already, but also that they are closely watched medically after the donation.  Pretty cool eh?
Also, less then 1 % of the population end up in renal failure and on dialysis.  So donors don't have a lot to fear about their own kidneys ever failing in the future.
Also - donors get moved up the transplant list once they have donated a kidney.  So if a problem ever did happen - nothing to worry about!

I am a poster child for eligibility for a transplant, due to my fitness and health so this is good news too.  One thing that was explained to me was that kidney disease is a vascular disease so my heart has some issues.  There is a bit of hypertrophy, so this means that my heart doesn't pump quite as efficiently as it could or should.  This means that I will have to see a Cardiologist and think about this when I am training for the Tough Mudder.  I will have to be a bit more cautious about my training because of this.
My blood pressure was 140/80 today, so that was good.

After going through all of these assessments today, I felt like I played a couple of football games in a row.

The last part was with a social worker and I was almost falling asleep, but it was good to hear.  A donor is up and walking around the day after the surgery and leaves the hospital 3-4 days after.  I would be in hospital for 1 week and would have to relocate to Vancouver for 6-8 weeks while they follow me post-transplant.

So hopefully sooner than later, we can start spreading this joyous news about the living kidney donor and hopefully I can find someone willing to donate.  One thing to think about is that blood types don't need to match.  Anyone can enter into a partner program or a chain where someone can donate a kidney to someone else and then I can get a kidney from someone I may not know and so on.  Also, there are drugs that I can take that will help me accept a kidney from someone that is not my blood type.

It would be so nice to not have to be on dialysis 3 times a week anymore.  It would be nice to have my normal life back.

We are in Vancouver until Friday so I can complete the pre-assessment process and meet with the surgeon.

Me on the ferry from Victoria to Vancouver

At the Kidney Pre-Transplant Clinic at St. Paul's Hospital

Relaxing after an exhausting day at St. Paul's Hospital

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. 

Become a member of this blog, leave comments and share this with anyone you want.

Join our facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=716495528&ref=tn_tnmn#!/pages/EmbodyLifeFitnessEmbodymentX/217473005013375

Follow our Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/#!/Embodylifefitne

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.