Perspective
Choose your perspective!
Perspective
You decide if your sun is setting or rising
Looks like my twelve days of Christmas will be coming early this year! I’m officially on my initial descent and looking to land squarely on the operating table in just over two weeks. My first Covid screening over the weekend was negative and all the results from the preliminary walk through last week were favorable.
So all we can do now is pray that the rest of North Carolina’s Covid situation remains controlled so as to not over run the hospital and non-essential procedures are allowed to proceed as scheduled.
As a refresher, December 14th is the big day.
The procedure is scheduled at Duke University and expected to take a few hours while I am under general anesthesia. This is a complicated yet common procedure and my team of physicians have no reason to believe anything but 100% success for my circumstances.
When all goes well and the smoke clears, I will have three kidneys and Marcus (bless his soul) will have just one. How many of you can say that? Interesting fact: the new kidney is placed just below the stomach along the right abdomen. The existing set of kidneys, who worked about as hard as I did in high school will be left in place. This is to minimize the level of disruption to my body and also avoid a much deeper incision/cavity on my torso when removing the existing set of kidneys.
Recovery time is estimated 4-5 days in the hospital mostly for observation and because they know I love bland food. And then 6-8 weeks of taking it easy at home with pretty much round the clock surveillance. No lifting anything heavier than 10lbs means I can take a break from the slave labor camp Mr. & Mrs. Sims have been running. Their model has always been “Checkout time is 18!”, so have to earn your keep round here.
My laptop is fairly light and of course even though I have some heavy hitter contacts in my phone, we should be all clear there. So I will make sure to update everything and everyone best I can in short order.
This year has been hard on everyone so I greatly appreciate the fact that you’re even reading this message. Your continued interest in my well being and support has helped keep me mentally capable of enduring everything.
I chose this picture because I love the beach.. any beach. Day or night and even sometimes when its not all that warm. Why? Well because I’ve never ever seen anyone upset at the beach. People are either partying, playing, exercising, relaxing, or simply sleeping. It is my peaceful place, where only my thoughts matter while being bounced against the tide.
Can you tell if this is a sunset or sunrise?
To me, it doesn’t matter.. the sun is up and its beautiful and serene. While many of us have had the sun setting on our agenda’s in 2020, we can easily flip the script and view it as a sunrise. You can’t tell if I’m yelling to my friends in Africa from Miami or to my Brother in Hawaii from LA. Everyone in between these destinations has had pain this year. I’m going to believe that it has been my prerogative to stay positive and put things into perspective, many many people around the world, in this country, in your neighbor hoods have had it much worse and so could you in the blink of an eye.
The sun is setting on my battle with chronic kidney disease and all the cautions, limitations, restrictions that have literally turned my world upside down.
Thank you for your genuine interest in my well-being and continued support. I appreciate you and will continue to lean on you as I enter the next chapters of my life.
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Sincerely,
Aaron