Since beginning this blog, I completed the paperwork for a kidney transplant and will start the evaluation process in June. Before I get started writing about this process, I need to write a couple hundred words about my wife.
Jeannie and I have been married for two years. I told her about the leukemia when we were dating. Other than some doctor visits, leukemia wasn't something that interfered with our life. She may have been thinking that some day I would need treatment, but it wasn't something we talked about.
I introduced her to Dr. Tarantolo when our conversations turned to treatment. As much as I had already come to respect Dr. T through our visits, my admiration and respect grew after observing how he was with Jeannie when they first met. I introduced them during one of my regular Thursday visits, and he immediately turned to her and gave her the rundown of my condition, what he thought about my prognosis, and why he thought it was time for treatment. He was reassuring and confident, and by the time we were finished talking, Jeannie had a better understanding of my situation, and she felt better about the treatment I was preparing for.
To say that Jeannie was supportive and helpful during my initial treatments would be an understatement. She was with me for the first couple of treatments, to make sure I was doing okay and to make sure I got home safely. She made lunch for us to eat during treatments and made friends with all the nurses. She even baked cookies for the nurses during the holidays.
The Rituxan, easy as it was to tolerate, still sapped a lot of my strength from me. Saturdays were usually pretty good days, but on Sundays I was pretty much a couch potato. I didn't have the energy to help much with the daily household duties, so Jeannie picked up the slack there, doing my work on top of the many things she does on a daily basis. By the time Wednesday would roll around, I would feel a bit more normal. Thursdays were the best, and then it would be time for another Friday treatment.
We celebrated our first wedding anniversary with the leukemia reduced to next to nothing. Our lives got back to something resembling a normal routine.
The kidney problems appeared out of left field. Neither one of us were prepared for what my kidneys were going to put us through. After my second kidney biopsy, we met with a dietician who set us up with some dietary ideas that would be more kidney friendly for me. That was all Jeannie needed to dig in and learn more about renal diet needs and get started on making some changes to what we ate.
Jeannie is a great cook. There isn't anything that she can't put together. I was never worried about her ability to adapt to the needs of a renal diet. She wasn't as confident, probably because she was cooking in a way that was different than she had cooked before. To her credit, she hung in there, signed up to receive renal recipes on-line, and started modifying some of her tried and true recipes to adapt them to the renal way.
Since the September train wreck, our lives have changed drastically. Everything we do has to line up with my dialysis schedule, doctor appointments, and Rituxan maintenance treatments. In other words, we don't do much. This has probably been the hardest thing for her. We used to drive back to see her Mom, her son Matt, and the grandkids, Jacob and Olivia, 2-3 times each month. That all changed with my kidneys.
Our trips back to visit have been cut back to once a month, which I know is not what she signed up for when she said yes to my marriage proposal! I feel bad sometimes that my condition has caused such a change in how we are living. She hasn't flinched a bit, and even though it's been tough to accept some of these lifestyle changes, I am so blessed to be with someone willing to do what it takes to make it all work out.
I can't imagine going through all of this myself. I get great compliments from Jan, the dietician at the dialysis clinic, for the way I've been able to do so great with my renal diet and how well all my lab work has turned out. I can't take any of the credit for that. Jeannie deserves all the credit for going above and beyond the call to make sure I have food that is good for me and my situation. I'm truly the luckiest man in the world.
As we prepare for the possibilities on the road to a kidney transplant, I know it will all be fine because Jeannie is right there with me.
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