I can’t very well hold an iPad up to the webcam in my Mac during Adobe Connect meetings, that’s amateur hour stuff… A rubber band mounted webcam, now that’s top notch.

Elizabeth has been in our family for about 10 years. She was a toy in a happy meal or something; I don’t quite remember where she came from. We would hide her around the house. I put her feet in an ice cube tray. It was a simpler time.

On our way to visit family, Sammie grabbed Elizabeth and wanted to bring her with us. No biggie. Well, one of the dogs, decided to “play” with her…

I’m pretty sure it was Mugsy. He has a cleft palate, and I imagine if he had hands, he would be a serial killer. He was able to exact some revenge on an unassuming doll, but he will most likely strike again.

I’m not really sure What’s next for Elizabeth. We never thought we’d lose her. Well, except for actually losing her. At least her eyes still open. One way to make a creepy doll creepier: chew off it’s hands and feet.

I’m not ashamed to say that I drink box wine. Not the decent quality stuff…. Almaden. It’s like $15 for the equivalent of 6 bottles of wine. It’s like turpentine. It comes with a built in consumption limit. Any more than two glasses, and you physically die. It’s a good reminder not to go over the limit. I am not normally a wine drinker for taste.

I got a note from a friend to try a Malbec, Marcus James. What a wonderful name… I imagined a simpler time, when people with awesome names. like Tug Patterson, Skip Nuttingham, and of course, Marcus James battled for brand and name recognition. Whether Marcus James was a pimp, slumlord, or distant cousin to Marcus Robinson,  is lost to time in my mind. The sheer fact that someone with a name like Marcus James, on a whim, could create such a wonderful wine is simply amazing. It’s delicious.

The problem, of course, is that Marcus does not come with the same built in limit. So, whenever Marcus comes to visit, chaos ensues. Well, chaos is a relative term… I’m way past doing crazy shit, it’s more like a calm quiet… My dogs look at me, I sit in the kitchen, and drink wine. Most of the chaos is in my head…
Sometimes, I wish I could make a TV show out of my thoughts. No one would watch… By day, Marcus James is a run of the mill hobo, tramping around town, getting into mischief. But, when he scrapes enough money together to grab some of Argentina’s finest Malbec, things get interesting. He’s transformed, from vagrant to man about town. People respect him, he’s dapper, refined, but with the same sense of mischief as his former self. I’ve befriended him in his former state, and find out about his secret. Hilarity in sues.

There was  a lot of paper work. I did countless blood tests, and Amy did too. Everything was a go for November 16th, 2009.

Jen was sick for most of her pregnancy. Looking back, I can’t see how she couldn’t be. My diet was pretty limited when I was on dialysis. I cooked outside because the smell of meat made Jen sick. All I could eat was meat, and white bread. To this day whole wheat bread makes me gag. I made chicken on our grill on white bread for months. It was all I could eat.

By November 16th, my creatnine levels were toxic, and it was time to either get kidney, or die. Amy wore sunglasses. My aunt took pictures of us before surgery. The whole thing was fucked up. I tried not to think about my unborn child, the idea that she would grow up not knowing her father if things went wrong. They gave me a shot of something, and it didn’t matter anymore.

Amy’s surgery was first. I was in the holding tank when they started. As soon as they were underway, they wheeled me back. They gave me a shot, right outside of the operating room. I remember getting on the table, and Dr, Desai telling be he would take care of me. They were in the process of tying me down to the table. Everything went black. I woke up, in recovery, with my wife. Pregnant, sick, and happy I was alive.

Peritoneal dialysis is good at keeping you alive, but not much else. At this point, Jen was pregnant, and I was on the kidney transplant list.

Jen’s cousin Amy saved my life. She gave me her kidney. I can’t even begin to describe how big of a deal this is. Please become an organ donor.

It was about this time that Jen and I found out that the medications I would be on post-transplant would make to harder, if not impossible,  for us to have kids.

We decided the most logical thing to do was to try for a kid while I was on dialysis. I have no idea if this was the right decision. It was what made sense at the time, and my daughter is my beyond the most important thing in my life. All in all, I think everything worked out for the best.

I don’t know if I was in denial, or decided that the dialysis clinic was not how I wanted to spend my days, but I decided to go the peritoneal dialysis route. You pump yourself of fluid in your peritoneal cavity (where your guts are), and through the magic of osmosis, extra fluids are removed from your body.

I had to have another surgery, where they placed another catheter in my stomach. I remember talking to my surgeon. This was in South Carolina. I know he did all he could to make Jen feel safe. I really appreciate him for that.

There was no doubt I was high out of my mind after the surgery. A nurse came into the outpatient room, and claimed Jen was at least part Asian. I concurred. I felt as if Jen had lied to me for years. I don’t remember most the ride home (about 2 hours).  I do remember drunk dialing everyone I worked with. I also remember seeing a child at a gas station all alone and thinking it was sad.

I remember listening to the pumps of the machine work at night. I never slept. alarms would sound if I laid a certain way.

Back at home, and after the drugs wore off, I remember the pain I felt in my abdomen. It was because they filled my stomach cavity with gas to perform the surgery. The farts were phenomenal.

A truck pulled up to my door to deliver supplies for home dialysis. I would do this while I slept.Our dining room was turned into a dialysis supply warehouse. Hoses, bags of dialysis solution, needles, tubing. It was wild. At least I didn’t have to leave the house.

I had to visit the hospital every month and meet with a dialysis nurse. I remember sitting in the waiting room, and meeting a little girl, about 9-10 years old. She was going to need dialysis, and she was scared. I could see it in her eyes. I walked over to her, and we talked.  I showed her the catheter, and how things worked. She asked if it hurt. I lied. I can still see her face. It haunts me. Her little braids, the innocence on her face. Knowing that she was in for hell.

This is probably going to take multiple posts…. As I think about the last few years, I realize that I’ve been too focused on things external to me. I try to immerse myself in work, family, our house, anything really, in an attempt to move forward. It’s not working. So here goes…

2009 was quite a year; I almost died… It’s the one thing that I try desperately to move past, but find myself immersed in daily.

Jen’s mom broke her foot, and we decided to take a ride up to PA to visit and help out if we could. Looking back, and even now, I believe that we ended up in PA so Jen and I wouldn’t have to go through the next few weeks on our own. In the span of what felt like minutes, our lives were changed forever- and not in the “Twitter changed my life” way – for real.

Unbeknownst to me, for the last 10 years or so, my kidneys were slowly shutting down. In 2009, they quit. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was literally about to die. My doctors said it was most likely from an upper respiratory infection that went untreated when I was a teenager, but the actual cause is lost to time. It sucks to sit in a hospital and have a doctor look you in the eye and say, “You’re one of the unlucky ones…” Thanks Doc. He went on to say in no uncertain terms that my kidneys were shot and I was going to have to go on dialysis… Like now, or I would be dead within the week. I’d need someone else’s kidney or I was out of luck. They could slow death, but they couldn’t stop it.  I don’t remember being sad, or upset so much. Jen was a wreck, she still is. I couldn’t believe that there was even a possibility that at 28, I’d be in a place where I couldn’t even function, or would be dead in days. I remember thinking of Franklin Roosevelt, of all people. His kidneys failed him too. How noble.

It was soon after that conversation that I was taken into a room to have a catheter “placed” in my aorta. I remember being dazed (I was on drugs), but looking up to see my heart on a monitor. My beating heart. Then, here comes this tube, into my heart. It was surreal. The tube was there because dialysis destroys your veins, so the rubber tube would be able to weather the abuse a little better. I have this scar now, where they cut a hole into my chest to get the thing in there. They did it so I could start dialysis immediately.

Dialysis

This part was pretty terrible. Dialysis was better in Pennsylvania, but once we got back to South Carolina, shit got real.

Dialysis: South Carolina Style

On more than a few occasions, I just blacked out. I would say, those are my best memories. Jen was allowed back there with me until I dropped over for 20 minutes. After that, they had a strict, ” No spouse’ policy. Dialysis is used to remove the extra fluid in your body that your kidneys no longer can deal with. When they remove too much fluid, you black out, throw up and feel like death. I always felt like death. The nurses were incompetent. I was sick a lot. I felt way worse on dialysis than I did almost dying of kidney failure. The treatment was worse than the disease.

i don’t remember much about this stage of my life. I don’t know so much if its a protective mechanism, or if I was just too sick. These are some of the memories that stick with me.

There was this guy, well that may be an understatement. He was once a guy. When I met him, he was devoid of arms and legs. he was a stump. He didn’t talk, he moaned. They would wheel him in on a gurney and hook him up to the machine next to me. Not that it mattered. The room was full of close to death folks everywhere.

The kids were the worst. I still can’t even think about them. It makes me sick.

If I close my eyes, I can smell the room. They would slop iodine all over where they would hook us up to the machine. The pump, I can still hear it. Watching my blood leave my body, and return.

Please don’t tell people you:

• are creative
• are a visionary
• have vision
• have a dynamic personality

You are not.

I saw an ad on TV yesterday for the Lincoln Motor Company. It’s sad that over the years, Lincoln has become a pretty forgettable brand. There was a time when Lincoln was a force in the luxury car market. Now, they run TV ads where they are trying to reinvent/reinvigorate themselves, and I see what I can only guess is Abraham Lincoln in the ad. What the hell is that all about? A man who was alive 20 years before anything resembling an automobile even existed… Great placement, guys.

Abraham Lincoln getting out of the back seat of a Lincoln automobile, of course.

I think of this as I try to find where it is that I fit in the larger scheme of the University. Experimentation needs to lead to the greater good, we should end up in a place where faculty and staff can benefit from the use of our services and experiences in meaningful ways. I find that meeting individually with faculty is the best approach. It’s why I love what I do at the campuses so much. It’s why I continue to meet with faculty here at UP. These conversations strengthen our University. Both from a teaching perspective, and strategically. Our faculty are more willing to experiment if they have real support, and someone they can count on.

I really hope that I’m not viewed as Abraham Lincoln getting out of a car by my peers, but maybe, that’s exactly where I need to be.