The spring has been cool with few days of real “beach” weather. Some years I swim in Skaha Lake in June, but I don’t think that will be the case in 2022.
I hope you will enjoy some photos today, all local. The photos include views of Okanagan lake and Skaha lake and a recent foal born (likely in my yard) last week. A couple of photos are taken in Summerland looking down on Okanagan lake, I was visiting family that day and they have a beautiful view from their yard, and lovely yellow poppies.
Enjoy the SLIDESHOW below – click arrows to advance the images ♥
The trail along the channel connecting the two lakes, Skaha and Okanagan.
I have been thinking about “detours” and how they have an unwelcome connotation.
As I look back at the stories in my life I have discovered that detours or unplanned changes to my day have led to the many fortuitous events and special memories.
For example – a detour lead to a hike in Manning Park – and discovery of Rhododendren Flats – I love that spot now but I have driven past it many times. I was encouraged to take a minor detour which I did, and it made me ask myself ” Why do I rush sometimes?”
I visited this oasis of peace and beauty in the park and will never pass by it again without stopping. It’s like a drink of spring water, refreshing, and an easy walk. Link here
Detours have lead to different falls, parks, baseball games, and unforeseen friendships.
Perhaps every week should include a detour to allow for serendipitous discoveries.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.
Mark Twain
Thank you for visiting today to my blog. Comments and suggestions are welcome ♥ – David
Thank you for visiting “Life and Random Thinking” today!
I was talking with my uncle in Saskatchewan yesterday and he commented “I think everyone eventually is going to catch Covid 19”. At that moment, it did seem that way.
I could only agree because I caught it last week, and so did my household. Everyone has been multiple vaccinated. The vaccines seem to work, we are holding up fairly well, not having breathing problems, not hospitalized either.
We are all isolating ourselves according to the guidelines from CDC. I am quarantining myself from any indoor spots for two weeks. I am now feeling well enough to walk for an hour again, and I am sure a bike ride will be no problemo. But staying away from people except from my own household.
My Turn to Dance
I chose for the title, “My Turn to Dance” because “Staying Alive – Bee Gees” came up on my playlist.
The Bee Gee’s were an amazing group with success that lasted 45 years beginning in 1958.
According to Smoothradio.com – the story behind the lyrics is as follows, and I quote.
Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote the song over a few days while working on a staircase at the Château d’Hérouville studio near Paris.
Robin said: “The subject matter of ‘Stayin’ Alive’ is actually quite a serious one; It’s about survival in the streets of New York, and the lyrics actually say that”.
Barry Gibb added: “People crying out for help. Desperate songs. Those are the ones that become giants. The minute you capture that on record, it’s gold. ‘Stayin’ Alive’ is the epitome of that.
“Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the BS and things that can drag you down. And it really is a victory just to survive. But when you climb back on top and win bigger than ever before, well that’s something everybody reacts to everybody”.
Jaunty kind of song, ha ha ha ha – Staying Aliiiive, and in blue was the ♥♥ Link to the Youtube and toe-tapping!
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Thanks again for stopping in and reading, I will just add a few photos from a few weeks ago when I was at Skaha bluffs looking down on the valley.
It was amazing to be up there with my son, and it’s just a few minutes from home.
I welcome your comments and I always respond to them♥ – David
Thank you for visiting “Life and Random Thinking” today.
I have a few photos to share from today’s bike ride to Okanagan Lake. I also will share some photos from Mother’s Day. This post belongs to my Thinking Out Loud category, absolutely.
I live in a valley and the mountains on the east and mountains on the west naturally funnel the air creating a breeze of some velocity. The direction often changes during the day so you can literally ride against the wind both to and from your destination (if there is a few hour time difference).
Today the wind is blowing from the south and my cherry tree is now devoid of it’s lovely white blossoms – yesterday it looked like it was snowing in my back yard.
On the ride today I stopped at the Japanese gardens and the blossoms there cover the sidewalk and the koi pond thickly, almost in drifts. (photos below)
blossoms on the koi pondblossoms on the pathway
I was awake at 5 a.m. yesterday and it was bright outside. It seems not so long ago that it was still dark at 7 a.m.
Spring is an inspiring time and optimistic by nature I think.
The days are getting longer, the warm temperatures are ahead, the new growth and buds on the trees. Even though the temperatures are a littler cooler this spring I know spring is here because the robins are back.
Please accept my apology for late Happy Mother’s Day wishes to the Mom’s who read this blog. I hope your day included time, messages and some warm moments with your families.
My wife had a happy Mother’s Day and we celebrated with a bonfire on the lake. I was very pleased to see her relaxing and enjoying visiting with family. We had a semi-circle of chairs around the fire, and I brought a BBQ which was portable so we could cook burgers. There was two salads and cake to celebrate the day.
Surprisingly the beach was nearly empty and the lake was very inviting, but I was not fooled.
I walked around the beach and saw a balancing log that made a natural teeter-totter. (below)
Thanks for visiting today !
I always reply to your comments and reactions to my post. – David
Thanks for visiting today and I hope you have found the story about my transplants interesting. They happened over an extensive period, beginning in 1986.
Today will be the story of my third transplant – Miracles Happen. I love telling this story because it is about Hope.
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My second transplant was in July, 1987 and I really count it as my first one. The first one only lasted a very short period despite desperate attempts to save that nearly cost me my life.
My second transplant came after returning to hemodialysis three times a week from September 1986 to July 1987. That transplant gave us a scare then last a wonderful 31 years. A big success, thirty is a number few transplants succeed to but I hope that improvements in transplant surgery and kidney matching will see transplants last longer and longer.
As the years passed since 1987 my kidney transplant gradually lost its ability to do its job. The numbers slowly went down but there was not much anyone could do to stop it.
As I approached my 60th birthday in 2018 the situation was inevitable. I was struggling and I had gone already past the point of when hemodialysis could/should begin.
Finding it tougher each day, I wrote a post called ” Don’t le me Die, Until I’m Dead” – the link is below in the caption, shortly before resigning myself to begin dialysis again, as a life sentence.
Looking back I wanted to celebrate one more birthday without relying on a machine’s life saving work. I tried hard but didn’t make it. I was aware that once I began dialysis, my struggling transplant would stop completely. It was like a marathon runner that had gone so far and done it’s best, it finally would take a seat and never rise again.
The day I called the hospital to say I had to come in and begin dialysis was sad but the staff on the ward were great, and that is no surprise. That day I began doing dialysis and feeling better. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays – even on Christmas Day in 2018. The inability to eat the same or drink the same was super frustrating but important as the days in-between treatment were as important as the days on dialysis in order to stay healthy. I wanted to stay healthy.
In preparation for going on dialysis I had done all the tests, vaccines and appointments to go back on the transplant list. Once I was doing dialysis again, and if my health met standards, then the transplant coordinator would look four times a year NATIONWIDE to try to find me a kidney match.
There was GOOD news and there was BAD news.
The good news was that I have a universal blood type – AB Positive – I can receive a tissue match from anyone. That was a big help.
The bad news was that because of my long transplant I had developed antibodies that would make me a difficult person to match to. My odds of finding a match were told to me to be about 2 in a hundred. As a result the matching process could be eight years or more.
Eight years or more. (sigh) That was demoralizing because that is a long, long, long time on dialysis and dialysis is not without its effects on the body. Perhaps too long to survive or too long to be healthy enough for a transplant.
My wife said to me “Two percent is way more than Zero” – let’s pray and have hope“. Instead of agreeing with my sad perception that it sounded hopeless she focused on the hopeful. I listened, and it helped.
Amazingly I got a call after three months from the transplant coordinator, Andrea. She said “Dave, this has never happened before, and it may never happen again – but we found a match, a close match for you on our first search!”
I was so excited but she said it was a cross country DONOR chain and it would be until April next spring to organize all the different donors and recipients in different hospitals (eight months away).
Since the chain could break any time up to the time of surgery – I was not to talk about it. So I didn’t – at least not for the first 7 months until I had an actual surgery date. Then I was excited, so excited.
A DONOR CHAIN is when each person in a chain is giving their organ to someone they don’t know in order that someone else donates an organ to someone they don’t know. That’s because the person they do know, they aren’t a compatible donor and so cannot donate directly.
These chains match organs to recipients who would otherwise not receive a transplant.
Ten minutes before they wheel me down to the cold operating room in 2019
That was my miracle, an amazing friend of mine had tested to donate to me directly but was not a match. They offered the chain idea as an option and he agreed. As a result of his YES I received my kidney in BC and someone in Ontario received their kidney as well. In fact everyone in the chain got their kidney. ♥ (Thankfully three years later and my friend is doing well! )
My Miracle Happened, I didn’t have to wait and try to survive on dialysis nearly as long as anticipated.
I am and my family are so grateful for a third opportunity to extend my life.
If not for dialysis and transplants I would have died at age 24 – 39 years ago (five years on dialysis and 34 years post transplant.
Thanks for reading. – David
Please take two minutes to become an organ donor. In my province of BC – this is the link here.
I feel compelled to talk about my experiences with kidney failure and kidney disease to raise awareness as I celebrate my third anniversary of my kidney transplant on April 24, 2019.
One in 10 people in Canada has kidney disease – that’s FOUR MILLION people. The leading cause is diabetes.
That is someone on every block in Canada, that is someone who lives in the same floor as you in an apartment building.
What about the USA? How many at risk in the United States?
More than 1 in 7, that is 15% of US adults or 37 million people, are estimated to have CKD.
As many as 9 in 10 adults with CKD do not know they have CKD.
About 2 in 5 adults with severe CKD do not know they have CKD
Infographic explaining chronic kidney disease in adults.
Today I will share my second kidney transplant experience. Here is recap of 1986 and my first transplant experience.
I have already shared my experience of dashed hope and a failed kidney transplant in April, 1986. My three hospital roommates, all kidney transplants, all died in the five months I was there in Vancouver General Hospital. I nearly died and am certain I was spared because of prayer.
In mid August, after months of treatments to try to save my transplant, I walked down the hallway one early morning to the nurses station and the nurse there, Grace, was crying. She was looking at my bloodwork results from the previous day – she assumed I had died also. (My roommate Brian, aged 34, had recently passed overnight and we were in shock still.)
What a hug I got, when she looked up, so kind!
Finally in September I went home and returned to thrice weekly five hour hemodialysis treatments and was able to get back on the transplant list again. I felt defeated and worn out, I weighed probably 40 pounds less than when I went in, the battle was over and I had lost. But I hoped to fight again.
I slowly regained strength and went back to work.
That was in September 1986 BUT July 1987 was going to bring a miracle and better days ahead. But I didn’t know it then.
We received the phone call at home in Richmond, BC. It’s the Heather Pavilion at Vancouver General Hospital calling – “Can you come to the hospital right away – we have a kidney for you. The surgery will be after midnight.”
This time the atmosphere is different. Still excited, but it’s tempered because of the internal emotional scars from the previous year’s battle. My wife and I discuss my funeral preferences as she drives me to the hospital. But we hope.
The long spring and summer in these halls in 1986 seemed too fresh as I walked down the hallway again. The phonebooth where I used to make calls. The nurses station. My old room.
Last year I had energy but I dread a repeat of last year – I can recall the horse serum IV that vibrated my body so much that my bed moved across the room. The nurses pushed the heavy bed back against the wall and covered me with heated blankets – over and over again – for two weeks.
But this was 1987 so I prayed it would work and right away. I didn’t say it out loud but I couldn’t handle a long drawn out fight.
Around midnight they rolled me to surgery. It’s colder there and the operating table is less wide, my shoulders stick over the edges. This time I asked the surgeon to pray with me which he was happy to do. The anaesthesia began and my vision disappeared from the edges in and there are never dreams.
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The next day I wake up and the nurses and doctors gather. The surgery went well, the kidney is a match and the transplant is working, … but not well.
I am on a drip for fluids to keep me hydrated and everyone is praying my urine output improves.
Four days later I have a biopsy. Things are moving quickly this time to figure out what’s wrong. That’s good because I am already weary of being here. Thankfully my family doesn’t give up hope, and keeps my spirits up.
Sunday arrives, it’s been another three days and no change. A group of doctors visit my bed and tell me if it doesn’t improve by tomorrow then they will schedule surgery to remove the transplant. Friends gathered to pray, and strangers even.
Sunday night, the floodgates open LOL. It’s a weird happiness when a nurse measures your urine output and has a big smile when she takes a big heavy bag. “Keep it up!” (thumbs up)
That’s it really, I improved and went home in four or five days.
That’s my post – In my second transplant experience the kidney gave us a scare and then began to work. It worked for a long time, 31 years!
AND 31 years is exceptional, I was very, very, very blessed and I am grateful.
But in September of 2018 the transplant had diminished in working to the point where I could no longer function, it had a long downward slide and I was forced to relinquish myself back to hooking up to a dialysis machine again.
I had had a fantastic gift of health and freedom but it would take – a miracle for a third. I love sharing my miracle third transplant, but not in this post today.
FACING THE FACTS
Highlights from the Canadian Organ Replacement Register Annual Statistics 2019 – 2020
• 1 in 10 Canadians has kidney disease; that’s 4 million people. • The leading cause of kidney failure is diabetes at 38%. • The number of people living with end-stage kidney disease has grown 35% since 2009. • 46% of new patients are under the age of 65. • More than 50,000 Canadians are being treated for kidney failure. • Treatment for those with end-stage kidney disease: • 58% are on dialysis, • 42% have a functioning transplant
• A person can lose more than 50% of their kidney function before symptoms appear. Symptoms are silent in the early stages. • There is no cure for end-stage kidney disease. • More than 25% of new end-stage kidney disease patients were late-referrals, which means they started dialysis only 90 days after first seeing a nephrologist.
Organ Donation • 75% of the 4,300 Canadians on the waiting list for an organ transplant are waiting for a kidney. • Of the people on dialysis, only 11% are on the waiting list for a transplant. • The five-year survival rate for adults with transplanted kidneys from living donors is 88% and 81% from deceased donors. • There were 1,709 kidney transplants performed in 2018. • Median wait time for a deceased-donor kidney transplant is 3 years, 10 months. • Median wait times for 2018 were: • longest in Manitoba (6 years, 3 months) • shortest in BC & Yukon Territory (3 years, 1 month) • 28% of kidney transplants were made possible by living donors. • More than 50% of all living donors were unrelated to the recipient. • Per million population, there were only 21 people who became organ donors and 15 people were living donors. • Rates per million population for kidney transplants from deceased donors: • Highest rate BC & Yukon Territory: 24.2 • Lowest rate Saskatchewan: 13.8 • Since 2008, the Kidney Paired Donation Program has completed 721 transplants.
This is part two of my post about my transplant in 1986. I decided to break it into two posts for ease of reading. – ♥
Here is the link for My First Kidney Transplant [Part 1] – click here so you can read them in order.
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My story continues from 1984 when I was forced to discontinue one form of dialysis called CAPD and begin another form called hemodialysis. It was a switch from dialysis 4 times a day to 3 times a week.
I still needed dialysis so I had surgery on my left hand to join a vein and artery together to widen the vein on my forearm and that increased its size and blood volume. That allowed me to have larger diameter needles inserted during treatments. The surgery left my left forearm with a ropey look to it hence my tendency for many years to wear long sleeves all the time to hide my disfigured arm. If not for the larger needles though my dialysis would have taken 16 hours instead of five each time.
I have described hemodialysis in other posts but a picture is worth a thousand words. I was videotaped on dialysis in 2019 so I will share that video even though it is many years later when I reverted again to dialysis to live. – the video is Two minutes in length.
How dialysis works: (I will keep it short ♥) In the video you can see one needle goes into the bottom of my forearm and is taped still. Blood rushes up the tube and (with the aid of a pump) is circulated through a filter to remove fluids and toxic things that would otherwise build up and kill me. The blood filled tube comes back and a second needle is inserted and taped above the first into the enlarged vein above the first needle to return the blood. You have to stay fairly still for the process and you lose your body heat gradually as your blood returns colder than when it left, that’s why the blanket. I had to hook up to a machine for about five hours a day, three times a week – dialysis is not a cure, it’s life support. If I had not done dialysis I would died quite quickly, about a week or so.
1984 until April,1986
(Back to the story, sorry for the sidetrack♥) Dialysis continued three times a week until April 1986 when I got the call. – my transplant was scheduled for 1 a.m. the next morning. I excitedly headed to Vancouver General Hospital for my kidney transplant – our hopes were high. My family was excited.
It was a sunny day and blue skies looked ahead.
We stayed up late that night as the surgery was after midnight and we hoped the dawn would be the beginning of a new life of health and freedom with my young family.
I woke up a few days later in pain, it was 3 in the morning and isolated except for a nurse. It was the beginning of five months in the hospital and a myriad of attempts to save the transplant from rejection.
While the city celebrated Expo 86 just a few miles away I fought to live and enjoy my life with my family and my young daughter. My fight and hospital “visit” lasted five months from April until September.
In September, I returned home, barely alive and back on hemodialysis. During my time in hospital my three roommates and fellow co-transplant patients had all died. Brian was just 34, he and I had been transplanted 24 hours apart. I was grateful to survive the summer of course but battle worn.
I was sad, much thinner (I had lost a lot of weight, nearly 40 pounds) but I was able to return to work and sleep at home.
It was awesome to be home. I could enjoy that absolutely. My daughter was three and I had lots to live for, special moments to treasure. That’s medicine you can’t prescribe.
Even going to work was better than that hospital ward, small room and the hospital bed. I was worn out.
I finished 1986 hoping I would get another chance of a transplant if I could find the mental and physical strength AND if a donor match could be found.
My next transplant chapter was in 1987 – although I didn’t know it at the time, which makes waiting harder of course, and it would be a miracle.
Better days lay ahead and I had to keep the faith, and live on dialysis.
Life and Random Thinking 