One of my parents' favorite U.P. stories comes from taking a couple to Elias Bros' Big Boy (about the only sit-down restaurant within striking distance of their cottage.)
They had a nice dinner and the waitress had stopped by their booth to ask about dessert when they suddenly realized she was looming over them, leaning heavily on their table with both hands. "I'm sorry," she said, "but my feet are killing me."
This is the "real" that often adds a unexpected, charming touch to interactions north of the bridge.
Well, I know how she feels, because my kidneys are killing me. Not Cheryl's; the two I had originally.
They can't kill me by neglect anymore, but they can and do cause pain. About at the point when I could have gone off painkillers to sleep because the pain from the transplant had lessened, they kicked in on a nightly basis. Thus: painkillers again.
That brings us to the second phase of all this -- the double nephrectomy I'll be getting -- if everything continues to go well -- 6 months from now. Just recovering from this, it's hard to contemplate something that will be, judging by incision length and disruption of my insides -- at least twice as traumatic.
But these monsters aren't giving up. I thought some years ago I might feel sorry for them when the end came -- after all, they did the best they could do for a long, long time, with their shrinking islands of healthy tissue unwittingly working against insurmountable odds. Judging by the U's tests, I was down well under 15 percent function -- stage V, the last stage of ESRD -- by the transplant.
So, once again, forward to another challenge.
