Day three

Dear Friends,
Had a lovely dinner at the Bavarian Chef with Kim (a former VT student and now UVa grad student) and Mom last night. Wicked thunderstorm on the way home.

Some of you may be wondering if hard living and drug and alcohol abuse has led to my predicament of failing kidneys. (Unfortunately?) no. I have a genetic disease called autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) that has been slowly turning my kidneys into a huge mass of worthless cysts. There is no cure and no treatment other than a transplant or dialysis. I have known about it for more than 20 years and the disease progresses differently in different people, so failure was always in the back of my mind, but I was hopeful that it was a long ways off.

I have been in the care of a nephrologist for many years, but the first real indicators that I was having problems came two years ago when I tried to donate blood and showed up anemic. Having never been anemic before, it was a shock. The next symptom was unexplained itching.

Anyway, I had surgery for a peritoneal catheter just before my 50th birthday last May and started at-home dialysis. It worked well until December when my body apparently started to reject the plastic tube in my belly. I got really sick and had to be hospitalized in January (rescued by Kate Lucot). 1/3 of the chemistry faculty visited me in the hospital in three days. Once again, I was well cared for by friends. I was switched to hemodialysis (in-center) and have been doing that ever since.

I was originally scheduled for a transplant in April, but in March, I got an infection and that put a stop to everything. I then had to get well and wait for my immune system to calm down.

More later, but I'd better stop now, because I don't want a TL DNR from Diego (too long, did not read :))