A Tale of Two Kidneys

At the risk of sharing too much, that new diuretic that Dr. Liver prescribed for me is impressive. I’ve been on Lasix and Amileride since last August, and my kidneys had pretty much stopped responding to them. But this third diuretic on board has inspired me to take up a new exercise – the fifty-yard bathroom sprint. Yesterday I lost three and a half pounds, and at the rate things are going I’ll lose that again today. The puffiness is reduced in my legs, and I don’t think that much fluid at all has gone into my belly. At the risk of jinxing myself, I’ll admit that I haven’t felt this perky in months. Yes folks, this is definitely better living through chemistry.

When I got to my desk this morning, I found this note on a stick ’em affixed to my computer screen:

Hello **********~

I haven’t seen you in a while. My schedule has changed some, but I wanted to let you know that you are still in my husband and my prayers. I hope you have a great day. We are all excited to see God answer those prayers and see Him heal you in a great and mighty way. Hope you’re doing well.

Just wanted you to know we’re thinking of you!

– 🙂 God Bless. 🙂 C*********

This was from the woman who cleans my office. I find myself once again humbled in the face of such concern from the people around me. Before all this happened, C and I exchanged pleasantries when she came into my office at the end of the day, but we never really had any in-depth conversation. Yet she and her husband (who works here as well, but knows me only through C) now ask after me regularly. I may not share her religious faith, but that doesn’t make me value the prayers any less. If I take nothing else away from this entire experience, I have gotten a new appreciation of the depths of people’s hearts. There are some very, very fine people out there.

I’m starting to worry a bit about the O’Beast. I’m not really sure anything is wrong with him, but this latest thing is so unlike him that I have to wonder. Keep in mind that this is a cat that lives to eat. He’s never forgiven me for putting him on a diet. His major hobbies are sleeping, eating, and begging for food. This is a cat who lives in hope that feline manna will drop from the sky on a regular basis. This is a cat who has now refused breakfast for the third time in the past week. Well, he’s due for his annual check-up for his cardiohypertrophy anyhow. I guess we’ll get him a full work-up to make sure that nothing is wrong.

My tax refund has arrived. This means new brakes for the car, and a start on my Roth IRA for 2003. Amazing how money gets spent as soon as it arrives.

And finally … I have to take a parting shot at Geraldo Rivera. I’ve never liked his bombastic and inflammatory style of “journalism”, and I’ll admit that I was surprised to find that Fox actually let him into the war zone. Now he’s gone and gotten himself kicked out of Iraq by our military. What does this guy do? He blames NBC, his former employer. Hours after the Pentagon publicly confirmed that they were giving Geraldo the boot, he was quoted as saying “In fact, I’m further in Iraq than I’ve ever been. It sounds like some rats from my former network, NBC, are trying to stab me in the back,” and “MSNBC is so pathetic a cable news network that they have to do anything they can to attract attention. You can rest assured that whatever they’re saying is a pack of lies.” I really must check the dictionary to see if his picture is under the word “arrogant”.