Month #8

It's happened again, another month has passed... eight months since the transplant and other than the fact that I'm gaining weight and going bald I have very little going down on the kidney front. That being said, it is approaching the time I need to start thinking about reaching out to the family who lost a loved one and whose loss led to my gain of a nicely functioning kidney. But I'm not sure what to say. That first month or two was very emotional for me. Thinking about it in more than abstract terms would always overwhelm me and could even bring tears to my eyes. These days I'm more in control of that, which is probably a good thing but, means I'm less capable of writing a full throated emotional letter and I hate feigning emotion. So I guess I need to sit with myself and really dig deep for some kind of memory of those first few weeks when this was all new and even a little frightening. These days its all routine, maybe too routine.

Too routine? Is my life too routine? Should I be entering myself into events that force me to work on my physical ability? Should I be climbing mount everest, running marathons, triathlons, and tough mudder? Should I be going on annual exotic vacations to places like Iceland, Taiwan, Texas, and Brazil? Should I be entering myself into myriad educational programs to advance my career? Should I be trying to date Scarlett Johansson (if I wasn't married already I mean). Should I be writing my memoirs? Should I become a celebrity chef? Should I be driving a Porsche? Should I own land in Montana for the tax write off. Should I be doing some good old fashioned hobnobbing? Should I develop a binge worthy series for netflix? Should I adopt a child from a foreign country, but not in the way that he/she comes to live with me, but instead stays there and I pay a monthly fee of just 19 cents per day to provide them a better life, beginning with their very first pair of shoes, which would probably be red nike's with a blue swoosh and no laces because he/she never learned to tie shoe laces. Should I join a zumba class, and what even is zumba? And did I really list Texas as an exotic place to visit? And why didn't you stop reading right there and pick up your phone and call me to correct me, because lets face it... Texas is as about as exotic as my fingernail clippers and that might be an insult to my fingernail clippers.

Okay, I got that out of my system. I know it was mostly silly nonsense but within that nonsense is the greater question of how to make this gift have a greater purpose than to simply go to work every day and to come home and watch better television than I could from my dialysis chair. I know, I sound like a broken record. I've said it before and have done nothing to change it. So why then? Is this just who I am? Have I settled in to my "oh well" life" and just given up on doing anything else to add spark to this drab existence?

It's a constant battle I can't seem to move beyond. But how do I reach out to these folks and tell them how thankful I am that I can now work longer hours and that instead of sitting in that dialysis chair for four hours a day three days per week watching horrible television stations, now I can sit on my couch and actually watch some quality television via my Roku and my Netflix account. Big changes... all thanks to your family member's kidney.

There are small ways that I'm trying to improve myself, but I have to admit that I fear I am a failure to the memory of my donor.