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Progress is a Relative Term

We had a little upset in our usual schedule of resting last week...we both can walk around our lake, which is about 2 miles, with no trouble.  Pat, though, had been noticing a bit of shortness of breath while walking uphill.  We, of course, ignored it until it got pretty bad last Friday, when he called to report it.  He had had a similar occurence several years ago and it had been a reaction to a blood pressure medication so we assumed that would be the case again.

The transplant coordinator talked to the doctor and they decided we needed to come in to their ER.  It's an hour away with no traffic and it of course was Friday night.  So we ate dinner and hit the road. The reason they wanted us at UWMC was so the transplant docs could oversee any tests and make sure the new kidney wouldn't be compromised.  That sounded good, until the transplant representative showed up three hours after we arrived and said she had just found out we were there.  So much for organization.  Anyway, in addition to the medication reaction, they were concerned about a possible blood clot in the lungs.  That would have been bad, so we were happy they checked it out.  The usual test would have been a CT scan with contrast but that's a no-no because of the new kidney.  They decided to keep him overnight in the hospital and did some ultrasound scans the next day that showed no blood clots.  A lot of trouble but a good result.  A change in medication and everything seems fine again.

So, back to me.  I had been feeling pretty energetic...we walked on Friday and might have done another errand before that.  Then we got in the car at 5:30 pm to drive to the hospital.  After all the hurry-up-and-waiting there, I left to come back home around 9:45.  They kindly said I could stay at the hospital if I wanted to...no thanks.  I've had enough of that.  I made good time getting home but still didn't get to bed until after 11:00.  I didn't get a great night's sleep and was up around 6:30 with texts from the patient and one of the kids asking about him.

So.....since I was up and since I had to drive through Seattle to get to the hospital, I decided I'd go to the glassybaby seconds sale.  I had been tossing it around in my mind for a couple of days and, since I was feeling pretty good, decided to stop by and check it out.  I knew people lined up way before it opened at 8:00, so I thought I'd get there a little later and maybe the line wouldn't be so bad.  Wrong!


Luckily I had a wool sweater on and it wasn't too cold, since I left my coat in the car a couple of blocks away and ended up standing in the line outside for at least an hour and a half.  Once you're there, you might as well stay, right?  Here's a photo that Sima found on instagram that includes me.  It looks like we'd moved up a bit since I took the first photo.



I fell in love with glassybaby a few years ago, and have collected several.  They're rather pricey, though, so a chance to get perfectly imperfect ones (as they call them) at a discount of 35% is a deal.  We're usually not in Seattle in January, and I've bought some from the website during the sale when they discount three or more 10%.

So, long story short, my quick stop turned into a 3-1/2 hour marathon, but I filled up most of a box and managed to get out.  My box, however, might have weighed a little more than the 8 pounds I'm supposed to be limited to, but sometimes ya gotta make an exception.  I don't seem to have any ill effects from the carrying.

I apparently usually choose the blue-green color.



If you notice the two green ones, however, they were intentional purchases.  I thought the green was the closest I saw to the color of the living donor ribbon and I wanted one of that color for us.  Pat suggested I get one to give to the other donor in our exchange group, so I got two.  We hope to get to meet them in the next couple of weeks.






Then the day progressed; I drove to the hospital and waited in Pat's room for the tests to be finished and him to be discharged, which happened about 3:30.  Then we drove home.

The moral of this bunch of details is that, after having more activity and staying up later two days in a row, I haven't been able to keep my eyes open past 8:30 pm or so and then have proceeded to sleep about 10 hours.  My energy, alas, is not keeping up yet with my opinion of it.  I guess I need a wake-up call every few days to keep me from getting too cocky.  We're one month out from surgery and healing up very well.  But apparently resting still needs to be an item on the to-do list every day.  I just hope I don't get too used to it!



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