Dealing w/ Chronic Kidney Disease with Crystal

Good morning, everyone! Hope you are doing well today. Well, I am doing as well as can be expected due to all of the snow that we received yesterday. I don't know right off how much we got, but it was enough to keep me home from work. And as usual, I do not have a definite subject that I want to talk about today. I do want to say that I have about two weeks before my first trip to the Women's Hospital in Durham to get some dental work done. And I am getting a little nervous about these trips. Even though I kind of knew that I wouldn't be going in to work this morning, I still woke up to my alarm. I did about 20 minutes of my stretching exercises, and then got up out of bed. It was after this that I got on a kick and moved a few things around in my daughter's room (Jessica is away at NC State) to make it a bedroom/computer room. I just need to go through a lot of paperwork now. I do not look forward to this! I guess I will be putting most of my writing stuff in ther...

Good evening, everyone. I hope everyone has been keeping warm tonight. With the cold weather here in Lowell, North Carolina, I have been trying my best to stay warm and being happy at the same time. You want to know why I say that? Okay, I will tell you. THE GOOD: This morning, I woke up and did some stretching for about 10 minutes before getting out of bed. Yeah, I did my stretching on my bed. Hope you learn to try this. Actually, I felt really good after this stretching session. All in all, my day at work was a busy one. Bulletins, newsletter prep, year-ending tax papers, and numerous phone calls today kept me busier than usual. But all in all, my work day was great. THE BAD: This afternoon, I was expecting to go out to eat with my oldest daughter and her father. The usual happened. You really want to know what that could be? Okay, I will tell you. He laid down for a nap earlier in the day (he works nights) and wouldn't get back up to go out with Ashleigh and me. This is hi...

Good evening, everyone. Hope your day is going well. As usual, I do not have any idea of what I will be talking about; it won't take me long, though, to have a subject to talk about. I do have some good news that I can share with everyone. I had sent out emails letting everyone in my contact list know that I was needing donations for a raffle and bake sale that I was having as a fundraiser in May. I received an email from a friend from high school. She wasn't able to give money, but she would be able to give a $300 photography session for the fundraiser. So this will be my first raffle item to be donated . It makes me giddy and excited to be able to have something substantial to start off the year with. If you would like to help someone out, donating time, items, or anything else would make their day. Trust me on this. This first item makes me feel so great, and yet so child-like at the same time. What I mean by this is that I could jump up and down for joy like a child...

Good evening, everyone. Hope you are doing well tonight. I have been doing well myself. As usual, I never know where this blogging entry will lead me. Sometimes, what goes on during my day has an affect on what I blog about. And sometimes, there are those moments where something will spark my interest to talk about. The main focal of my entry today is still not clear, but I do know that we all have a special purpose here on earth. There are some of us who have a clear talent. There are some who have a special talent in singing, preaching, teaching, arts/crafts, carpentry, etc. I guess that I could say that one of my special talents would have to be feeling the music that I sing and doing paper work. But some wouldn't call either one of these a talent, though. Would you? ...Whether we have a special talent or not, we all have a passion in life. I would have to say that my passion in life is in the wonderful world of books. I love books and I have a large collection of books...

Good evening, everyone. Hope you all are doing well this evening. Everything is going well with me as of right now. And as usual, I do not have an inkling of an idea of what my subject matter will be tonight. I did just get through talking to my youngest daughter. She is away at college and I hadn't talked to her in almost two weeks. But, hey, I have Ashleigh here with me and she has been a very remarkable young lady since Jessica's been away at NC State. She helps me out around the house. She also goes with me to the grocery store. But what I can say most about Ashleigh is that she shows her heart to me more now. How do you show your heart to others? People who show their hearts on their sleeves usually like to smile. I tell everyone that if I could see them smile, then I am good to go. A smile can go a long ways for people. Just today at dialysis, I got so many of the nurses to smile. It warms my heart to see smiles everywhere. So no matter what, give a smile and make...

Good evening, everyone! Hope you all are doing okay this evening. I am feeling okay as of right now. However, I woke up this morning with one of my knees giving me a problem. So I did the next best thing that I knew would help at least a little bit. At 5:45 am this morning, I fixed me a bath as hot as I could stand it. As usual, it helped a little bit. But as the day went by, it began hurting once again. This brings up an issue that I have. I was hoping to not have to start taking one of my medicines again, but with the knee flare up, I am going to have to go back on my tramadol. I was hoping to at least stay off of this medicine for awhile, but with the stretching that I have been doing in the mornings, I guess that will change. For awhile, I have been down to 9 medicines. This will make it 10 medicines once again, though. I just hope that this will do the trick for awhile. Oh well, on to the main point that I had in mind for this entry. I hope you all are trying to make time f...

Good evening, everyone! Hope you are doing well tonight. I am doing good even though the Panthers lost yesterday. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I posted about their losing game yesterday. I had an idea this morning about what I could blog about. But since I didn't get to write down the idea, I forgot what it was. I hope that I can remember what it was before I get finished with this paragraph. Yesterday, I had someone to come up to me after our church service. They asked me how I was doing, and I responded with a "doing well" comment. They also made a comment about how I am doing so good considering all that I have been through these past two years or so. I have had a lot of testing that had to be done along with the next two months of dental work. When this young woman was talking to me, though, I told her that God has plans for me down the road. Do all of you remember the story in the bible about God talking to Moses by the burning bush? Well,...

Good evening, everyone! As you may know by now, the CAROLINA PANTHERS lost this weekend to the 49ers. And I for one will say that at least we made it this far. The positive is that we can look forward to next year and hopefully will make it all the way. Who says that we can't take the negative and make it into a positive? I always try to take everything in a positive way. I hope every one of you can try to do the same and make anything negative that comes your way into being positive. Being negative about everything is not good for you or the people around you. Being positive can be one of the best things that you can ever do for yourself and others. Think of it this way... when I was younger, I had very low self-esteem. Do you want to know when my low self-esteem became something more? Well, to tell you the truth, it was a gradual thing. It started getting better when I started back to church and received God into my life. When I started putting Him before everything else, I...

Good afternoon, everyone. Hope things are going well with all of you. Right now, I am watching the first of four NFL playoff games this weekend. The New Orlean Saints are up against the Seattle Seahawks first. This is a very important game for my team, the CAROLINA PANTHERS. Who do you want to win? As you can tell, you know who I am rooting for. I also believe that the PANTHERS will be heading towards the SUPER BOWL in three weeks. Good luck to you and your teams. As usual, I did not have anything to talk about when I started a few minutes ago. But now that I have been going on about the PANTHERS, I can safely say that I am going to talk about my faith. Does everyone know what it means when you hear the saying "gotta have faith"? My faith goes back a long ways. My faith in God has grown so much in the last 14 years. When my faith was truly tested for the first time that I can remember, I was having to take care of myself and my daughter, Ashleigh, after she was diagnose...

Good evening, everyone. I hope everyone has had a great week so far. Unbelievably, I have had a really good week. Dialysis is going as good as it can considering that I go three days a week.The doctor came through today and talked to us about labs and such. They are very optimistic about my labs. He just had a question about my vein being thin for the blood to flow through. They will be looking at the results from my labs in the next couple of days to see why my numbers are lower than usual. He said that it could be just a mistake on their part, or that it could be that I may have to get a test done about the flow rate. I am hoping for the best, though. At first, I didn't know what I was going to talk about tonight. But as I wrote that first paragraph, I did realize that there is something on my mind. As I was growing up, I always had some of the lowest self-esteem possible. And if you know me now, you wouldn't believe it if I were to tell you that now. I can't say wh...

January 8, 1935 - Do you even know what is so significant about this date? Well, I do and I am sure a lot of my older readers more than likely know what it signifies. Okay, I will just go ahead and tell you. On this date seventy-nine years ago, the one and only King of Rock-n-Roll, Elvis Presley, was born. Elvis Presley was one of a kind, people. He was a great actor, a great singer, and just a great person all the way around. I was at the beach with my family when we heard that he had died in August of 1977. Can you remember where you were? The point that I am getting to here is that every day has a significance to someone around you. But, with days going by so quickly, we have a tendency to forget about others in the long run. Since we don't know when we are going to die, the emphasis is on knowing how to bide your time with the people you love. I had an uncle to die this last November close to Thanksgiving. I had not seen him since the year before at our yearly family re...

Good evening, everyone! I know this is later than I usually do my blogging entries. But hey, I can say that at least I am trying to be consistent here. I hope everyone has had a great new year so far. I am going to start out with my usual high-five of my NFL team, the Carolina Panthers. How 'bout them Panthers? They are the second seed in our division, and we are thatmuch closer to the Super Bowl.  We are going up against the 49ers next week, and we will beat them. This team is a team worth rooting for. They have such a great defense. Okay, now that that is out of the way, I just want to say that today was my 20th wedding anniversary. I just want to say Happy Anniversary and Congratulations to all of those who are having such memorable wedding anniversaries this year. My parents will be married 49 years on February 3. My Aunt Pat and Uncle Glenn just had their 50th anniversary yesterday. At least there are still some out there that has lasted a good long time like this two lov...

Good afternoon, everyone! Hope you are having a great New Year's Day so far. I know that I am. I have already spent some quality time with my oldest daughter. We played a few rounds of a card game as I was cooking for our lunch this afternoon. Who knows what the food in the southern meal for New Year's Day stands for? I know what the greens and the black eyed peas stand for. But I can't remember the others: hog jawls, cornbread, etc.. The greens stand for the dollars that you will have throughout the year, and the black-eyed peas account for the change that you will keep throughout the year. But all in all, don't be afraid to get involved in something outside of your comfort zone. I am going to get more involved with missions around my church and I hope to get even closer to God this year. Ciao for now.