Back after a long hiatus.

My life has been chugging along and I'm a bit shocked at how much time I've allowed to pass since I last posted.

The quick and dirty run down of events in the last few months. Just before my wife and I went back to the town we both grew up in, I had gotten a false alarm call for a kidney transplant. We both decided that since I appeared to be much higher up on the last than we had planned for, I would just put a hold on my plane ticket and try and use it on a future trip. I was fairly certain that even being higher up than we had thought, I was unlikely to get a call while my wife was back visiting her family for five days. So naturally, four days before Christmas, and two days before my wife was set to leave, I received another call for a kidney, which ended up being a go. She was able to get an extension for her flight as well (thank you Delta!) and just before midnight on the 21st I went into surgery.
Of course, something can always go wrong with these things, but we got through everything without any hitches, and compared to a lung transplant, this was a walk in the park. I was out of the hospital in a week, and with my immediate possible future radically different than what we had expected, I got all of my plans in place in order to return to school and finish my degree in biology. I'm supposed to start this summer.
I've been trying to make sure all the hoops I need to jump through for financial aid and registration have been jumped through, and am focused on getting my health back. I honestly don't think the experience of declining health due to end stage renal disease is close to as bad as the experience of declining lung function, but I had forgotten how much better I felt before the renal decline.
As a cf'er, I've been fairly typical in being extremely lean my whole life. I'm not tall, 5'8", and the most I've weighed is 130 lbs. With the kidney issues my weight had dropped to 110, and in order to maintain that, I was basically force feeding myself in order not to drop any further. I had forgotten what it was like to have an appetite, energy, focus. My weight has been slowly climbing back up and I'm doing more than I have been able to in quite some time.
Life is going well. We're adjusting to the new reality, a much more expansive one than before, and I'm pretty happy I didn't die, again. I received a kidney much sooner than we had thought would happen, I'm going back to school to finish my degree, I have a new nephew on the way, we can actually look to the future and believe it may be longer than we had thought.

Maybe I'll put more down later, but I thought I'd get started with something small or I might never have gotten around to it.

Flu Shot

I was able to get my seasonal flu vaccine the other day. The day I received my shot, they got a shipment of swine flu vaccine in. I'm hoping that they won't run out by the time I go back for my nephrology appointment in early December.

I'm still a bit torn about getting the vaccine. Not because of all the crazy bullshit that the anti-vaxers are spewing forth, but because there is some evidence that immunosuppressed patients cannot be assumed to mount a vaccine response. This does not mean you get vaccinated and something awful happens, but rather, you get vaccinated and the outcome may be as if you did not receive the vaccine. I cannoot stress that may part enough. At the moment, the CDC is still recommending transplant recipients (among others) receive the flu shot--not the intranasal, as this is a live attenuated virus.

Despite my initial concerns that I might be taking a vaccine from someone who could most definitely benefit from it, I ultimately decided I would get the vaccine. I will follow the science as it becomes available, to find out if the transplant population benefits from the practice.

And until then, I'll be getting my flu shots.