Have a salad and form an orderly queue…

So, it’s happening… I always knew this time would come, but it’s still a bit of a bombshell. After a long morning at the hospital and a litany of changes to medication, the routine poking and prodding and usual do’s and don’ts, I am to be referred for dialysis and a kidney transplant. Not that I need a transplant or dialysis just yet… but these things take time. I need to be in the pipeline. Shit is starting to get real.

I had a funny turn yesterday, like an old man, and was summarily sent home from work. It was a sensation unlike anything I’d felt before, like a wave… tactile and heavy… starting in my feet and hands, before creeping along my limbs and towards my head, a heavy bass-note heartbeat reverberating throughout my core. Like the stubborn boy I am, I drove home (along the busiest stretch of road in the nation – foolish Dan, foolish) before spending several hours in bed.

It turns out I had fluid on my lungs, a trademark symptom which, when coupled with anaemia and lack of sleep, was a double whammy of lassitude and fatigue. Today I have been furnished with yet-more pills (rattle, rattle) which should help, and I feel more-or-less normal. It has to be said that ‘normal’ seems to be located at the centre of a victorian garden maze… although I am not lost, I just need to get my bearings and take stock.

Importantly, I have been assured that while I can exercise, I should… In the words of my doctor today “exercise is never a bad thing”. So, for the time- being, my plans remain unchanged… I’ve already tapped you up for donations (JustGiving), but at some point in the near future I’ll also come a-knockin’ asking for living donors. It’s a big ask I know, and it’s OK to say no, but just in case – have a salad, look after yourselves and form an orderly queue.