I'm sorry....my kidneys are what???

So, the story. I will make this one quick. Jan 18- I am back at work from a wonderful Disney vacation over New Years, but having some occasional random nausea. I get that sometimes from dealing with insurance companies, but this was different. I was also more tired than the usual, meaning I was almost too tired to walk to the break room for chocolate. So, I called my friendly physician and asked if I might have mono, I've heard you can get that from kissing strange people (sorry Mickey Mouse). He said to come in at lunch and let him get a blood sample to see. Jan 19- my friendly physician calls to say I am being admitted to the hospital, please leave work immediately. Now I would usually have no problems leaving work immediately, but going to the hospital is not the way I want to do that. Fast forward a few hours, and I'm in a room being told by the leading nephrologist that I am in kidney failure and will need a transplant. Jan 20- I have a central line placed into my heart and have my first hemodialysis. Jan 21- second hemodialysis and demand DC from hospital to go home.

By the way, Hemodialysis = have the flu and run 10 miles and then find out that you forgot a huge project due tomorrow at work....that would be close to the physical and mental feeling of that. Hemodialysis is my life for 3 weeks until I can get a cath placed into my abdomen to allow me to run fluid in and out of my abdominal cavity and perform dialysis by using osmosis. This is similar to doing a radiator flush and it gives me 3 days a week of my life back. I began on a machine that did this for me at night while I sleep. Well, while normal people sleep. This is apparently the way most kidney failure patients like to do this, however, this requires an air compressor in a machine to kick on and drain/fill fluids 5 times through the night. For a light sleeper such as myself, this was not a fun situation either. So, I change to continuous exchanges. This means I drain and refill 4 times a day. Positives- I can exchange when convenient for me and I sleep through the night. Negatives- I carry 2 liters of fluid in my abdominal cavity at all times, meaning my working as a body double for Matthew and Channing in Magic Mike has come to an end.
So, that is where my current situation lies. I go in a couple days (Aug 7th, the day after my birthday) for a day of testing (much like being probed by Alien life forms and having your blood drained). They will image every part of my body and take 18 vials of blood, and no, that is not a typo. If all looks good, they will put me on the official list to await someone else's tragedy to afford me a kidney and they can start to test the hero's who have offered to be a living donor and save my life.

I will try to keep some quick updates as to where I am at on this journey, and I welcome any comments and questions that anyone might have. However, I want this blog to be a positive experience for everyone, so if you want to argue the finer points of religion, theology, or apologetics, you can private message me.