Tuesday, May 28, 2002  3:03 pm  <|>
<141> Seems like a lifetime later: Well, I've been MIA for quite awhile now and I bet a lot of people are wondering about this... ok well maybe at least a few of you. Well, the truth is I've had more happen in the last couple of weeks than my whole life really in terms of stuff to go through. So here I am and I'm still going though, so I guess that's a good sign right? So I'm not even sure where to begin, but I will just summarize cause I'm sure you don't need to hear all the "fun" details of what has happened.

Basically it all started May 5th, a Sunday... I had felt crappy all day and at first had just wrote it off as a stomach ache / exhausted / finals week / what can you do day, but I had a final assignment due in two days and all I could do was sleep or feel sick, so I knew eventually there was something very wrong. After a couple of naps and barely eating all day I finally just forced myself to do some form of work, I had to, things had to be done. So around 11:30pm I finally get up to sit at my computer for the first time all day, still feeling like complete crap, but what I didn't realize was it was a lot more than that. I ended up being rushed to the ER around midnight and was in the hospital since then until May 15th, but the process has not ended there... Now, as for what happened. My kidney's failed. That Sunday they had to rush me to the hospital, my lungs were filled with fluid, my right lung almost collapsed from that, plus my blood pressure and electro lights were so out of whack that I was in no normal state of mind whatsoever. So after almost 2 weeks in the hospital, a bunch of tests and meds later I finally did get out, but since then it still hasn't been a piece of cake exactly. I have dialysis 3 times a week now. For those of you who don't know, dialysis is when you have a machine clean the waste and things out of your blood for you, something your kidney's normally do when they are working correctly. It doesn't really hurt, it can tire you out big time and make you feel a little weird afterwards, especially right now since I'm still adjusting to it, but otherwise it's just something that takes a bunch of time (4 hours a session) and something I would rather not have to do (of course), but at the same time it is what keeps people will kidney failure alive, so who am I to complain about modern medicine? So this will continue until I find a kidney donor, which I am actively looking for right now. It's a process though, so it's not like I can just get a kidney transplant tomorrow, but it is where I'm headed and the best option for once that takes place it'll be the closest to having a normal life back as I can get right now. So yeah I'm ready for that sooner than later.

I guess this seems like it's pretty crazy, that something like this can happen out of nowhere. Well, it wasn't completely out of nowhere. I had some kidney involvement due to my Lupus during my junior year of high school, but I did 6 months of treatments to repair the damage. This time they didn't see it coming quite the same way, and it happened in a matter of weeks, all the damage and such, so this time those treatments I did before they say wouldn't be worth trying again. I don't know if I have completely given into this yet or not, but again these are all things I gotta think about right now. I have some options, I just have to figure them out.

All of this stuff happened with me having just 3 days left in my semester. My school is being really good about giving me time to make up the things I missed, which are mainly my final studio game assignment, the updating of this site to go along with it, a final paper, and a final exam. So just 3 classes were affected and as for the others that I took I got all As in those, so I would like to try to fix up the other grades from this past semester too ya know? I have a little time, but I don't want to put it off either. I just have so many other things going on right now. Everyone is telling me to take it easy, but all I really want to do it take care of everything. I guess for school, I can wait a little, but the sooner it's all taken care of the better if you ask me. At the same time, summer hitting right when it did to go along with all of this was helpful I guess. I don't know how I would have managed missing a lot more classes at the end because of it and such. Plus, since it's summer I don't have to worry about having set things to do everyday, aside from dialysis now and things. So this buys me a little time to sort my life out. In addition, I want to get back to work work, my real job that was supposed to be taking off this summer and I still intend that it will, it just has to be delayed a little loner than I wished I guess. Ahh, so much to think about! And summer is supposed to be a vacation... so just please bare with me right now, as I have so much going on and so much to think about. I'll be around, after all, this website has always been about keeping me going and I think it might be needed now just as much as ever.