Tagged.

So, I got “tagged” by eTrish .

Thanks.

So now I am required to (attempt to) do the following. Okay, I’m game. Here are the rules to the game:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you. (2) Post the rules on your blog. (3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. (4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs. (5) Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Okay. Now, it’s my turn.

! and 2: Done.

4: Ain’t happening. I only know two people on WordPress, and they’ve already played the game. I don’t know if any of my other friends blog. It’s a pity; I thought I was a lot more popular. Sigh.

3: This I can slamdunk. I mean, come on! Just seven weird things?

Amateurs.

1) I occasionally like to put peanuts in my (bottled) Diet Coke or Coke Zero. It’s like having a sugar free Snickers bar: peanuts, caramel. Okay, no chocolate; nothing’s perfect. By the way, that’s three product endorsements. Do I get any fat cash contracts? HECK no!

2) I love stuffed animals. Always have. I have several, mainly otters, which I collect. I am 47. I am heterosexual. Yes, really.

3) I have conversations in my car with people who aren’t there…and usually they are reruns of conversations from twenty years ago. In my car, however, I win the arguments.

4) Sometimes, in bed, I will entwine the blanket between my fingers, to feel the cool textures of the blanket between them. Wonder what Freud would say about that? On second thought, no, I don’t.

5) I never fell in love at first sight. First touch, on the other hand….

6) When I look at the stars at night, I try to see the ones I know I’ll never be able to see. It’s nice to look into emptiness, and know, even in the dark part of the sky, there is light.

7) If my football team is losing, I’ll change hats. If they don’t start winning after that, I take the hat off. If they lose anyway, I cry. Childish? I’m an Alabama fan. I wear a houndstooth hat on occasion. I was in college when Bear Bryant was still coaching. Don’t you know the U.S. Constitution protects both freedom of religion and freedom of expression? Deal with it.

So there we are. I will perhaps try to tag others as I get to know more people in the ‘blogosphere.

How it is.

Let me first tell how it was.

In November of 1993, I reached End Stage Renal Failure. I went on dialysis soon after, and then waited a year for my HMO to approve the kidney and pancreas transplant coverage I needed to go on the SPK list.

The call came. February 19, 1995 at a little after 8 AM. I went in to Emory, was prepped for surgery, was on the table for about four hours or so, and woke up…well, I didn’t have to take insulin for a long time after that.

I was joyful. I was filled with life like I hadn’t been since I was nine. I was happy, I was ecstatic!

I had to pee!

And then the steroids kicked in. Understand something very clearly: I feel more gratitude than I could possibly express to the family of my organ donor. I have life, thanks not to their loss but to their gift. But sometimes living with steroids is less than a fine time.

Let me tell you how it is.

There’s depression. I was prone to it by heredity; the steroids just made it more apparent. “‘Roid rage” is not an urban myth. I was easily, inexplicably angry at times. The symptoms became less pronounced as the dosage level went down, but even now I can be subject to sudden irritations, usually accompanied by yelling, cursing, but fortunately no violence…at least against anything actually alive. A few nonliving things have been damaged now and then, but so far I’ve retained my grip on sanity pretty well.

There are days when I just feel like crap. I’m tired, listless. I sit too much all the time, but on some days I just don’t even feel like getting out of bed. Oh, I do, but sometimes it feels like an act of sheer will just to get up and go to work. (I am told this is just middle-age; my non-recipient friends are dealing with this, too…but this is my story and I’m not cutting them slack at the moment).

There are good days. There are days when my mood lifts, and the world is bright and I’m top of my game…whatever the heck my game is, I’ve never been too sure, but I’m on top of it.

There are days when my memory is not…I have days when my short-term memory is…

What were we talking about?

Oh, yeah. Anyway, my short-term memory, always a little short of eidetic, gets so bad I go looking for the glasses I’m wearing. It’s not Alzheimers…I hope…it’s the steroids…and the blood pressure meds I have to take because of the steroids. And the antidepressants I’ve been prescribed for the depression exacerbateded by…you guessed it…the steroids.

Where was I again?

The question is, would I, knowing what I know now, have been willing to go through this for the ten years I had post-transplant without having to take insulin injections, without having to worry about having a piece of cake or pie or candy, without having to…manage…my every waking moment? Without having to manage how I did every little thing to make sure I could get to my insulin and syringes to stay alive?

You bet I would.

I am on the insulin pump now, after my grafted pancreas ceased to cope. It works well enough, better than I had originally hoped, though I do have to manage things. I live in some expectation that at some point the kidney will fail, and I will be back on that dialysis bandwagon. Maybe not.

I get along pretty well, despite feeling like crap some days, despite never seeming to have quite enough energy to get everything done around the house that needs doing. I am reasonably healthy, out of shape and overweight, yes, but reasonably healthy. I am married to a woman who, somehow, still loves me even though she didn’t get quite everything for which she hoped (hey, Mandy Patinkin married someone else!). My cats haven’t killed me…yet…and my dog adores me. Well, Chloe adores anybody who will play with her, but she likes me, and I’m happy with that. I have a job, a real, sure enough 40-hour-a-week full-time job, with health insurance, two weeks paid vacation and real responsibility…and I even got to go to Paris on business! I’m doing okay.

I’m doing pretty darned okay.

I am still looking for God. I believe in Him. I haven’t found His name yet. I thought it was Jesus, and it may be, but unlike John Wesley I’ve not quite felt my heart strangely moved, and while I hear His voice, I haven’t heard what I’m here for, what I’m meant to do, how I can live up to the gift I’ve been given, how I can find the energy…and the heart…and the compassion…to make a difference somehow. I tried going back to church, and it was a comfort for a time, but unlike my best friend Trish, who’s faith sustains her, and whose faith inspires her to work for the good of all…I couldn’t keep going when my heart wasn’t in it, and when it was more for my benefit than for His. I haven’t found God’s love inside me yet, not enough to get outside of my own selfishness, wilfulness…my own narcissusism (come on! I’m writing a BLOG!).

But I have hope that I will find Him someday, when maybe I’ve found the way to love someone else more than I love myself; to give up my own happiness and comfort for the sake of the happiness and comfort of others. To love others with the love that I have been given, and with the joy that is there for all of us.

John Wesley once said that redemption was but the door to the House of God; once in you’ve only begun the life of faith. He also said that the door doesn’t close behind you, and that you may wander out again. But, you see, the door…is always open.

The door always open. I put my hope…my faith…in that.

Selah.

Snow Falling On Something Other Than Cedars

I will not go into endless paroxysms of poetic amazement at the simple fact of flakes of frozen water falling gently to the ground. I won’t. I live in Metro Atlanta, where this perfectly natural combination of cold temperatures and precipitation is always greeted as a combination of holiday and climatic disaster.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not complaining about how Atlanta shuts down in a storm like this. It’s never been cost-effective for states in the Deep South to buy the number of snow-clearing vehicles necessary to deal with even a small snowfall. Tree-clearing vehicles and tools for dealing with tornado, hurricane and forest fire damage, yes, but not snowfalls. I can live with that.

I did go out and take a few pictures.

This one is looking down my street. No one was out in the neighborhood.

Yes, it was beautiful, though as you can see, the coverage wasn’t deep, nor very complete. By the end of the day the snpw had already begun to melt. Snowjam 2008 wasn’t much of an event, though it was rather pleasant to spend the day in the quiet.

There was a little traffic on Highway 92, up the street, but the snow seemed to hush even that occasional noise.

I think what we love best about snow days is the sense that suddenly all that is everyday, all that is humdrum, is shown to us from a different perspective. It makes us appreciate things a little better, maybe. It reminds us that beauty can come upon us at any moment. The question, as always, is are we ready to perceive it when it comes?

Today, as I walked with my dog Chloe in the falling snow, I had a moment to appreciate the snowy transfiguration of a suburban street, to see even the mundane can have it’s moment of beauty.

Not bad, Old Man. Not bad at all.

Idols, Sven, the Weather and the Dog

And so the new season of American Idol has begun with the usual awful auditions, hot young girls…some of whom can sing…not that anybody cares…and the rare surprises.

Why do I watch it?

As my wife says, sometimes, when you know nobody’s going to die, it’s kind of fun watching a train wreck.

* * * * * * * * *

My wife and I disagree over Sven, the tall Swedish organizer-fellow that helps that commercial family deal with all their obligations. She says he wouldn’t last a minute in our house; she’d kill him when he first woke her up with all that ENERGY.

Me? I just want a free sweater.

* * * * * * * *

The snow fell on Metro Atlanta this evening. I drove home through it, with rather more care than usual. The snow, sticking to the road surface, made it kind of difficult to see the edge of the road in places. It had a heavy, silent beauty.

Okay, no more cliches about falling snow.

I made a point of not going by the grocery store for the traditional bread-and-milk grab. We had milk, we had bread…we had pasta. Joy made spaghetti for supper. I had driven home hoping she was making spaghetti for supper.

What a marvelous woman!

* * * * * * * *

Chloe the dog wasn’t fazed a bit by the snowfall. Only three years old, I don’t think she’d ever seen it before. Her genes make her hardy, I guess; half poodle, half retriever, she shrugs off wet cold pretty easily. It also apparently makes her a little stir-crazy. She can really bark, and in our house, the sound can drill right through your head like a ten-penny nail.

Fortunately, I don’t own a gun.

Worrywort

I worry too much. Last week I posted about being concerned about some lab results, and moped around all week worrying about what they meant, that there was a possibility that my transplanted kidney was in trouble.

I was overreacting. My nephrologist told me that my numbers were good. Sure, she said, I’d do better if I lost some weight. The kidney would have less stress on it; my bloodsugar would be under better control. My darn back wouldn’t hurt so often.

I knew all of that. It’s the doing that’s the problem. Always has been my problem. I spent most of my life seriously underweight. Now, thanks to the steroids, I can’t seem to lose weight. Of course, being completely out of shape is no help, and sheer couch-potato-hood is not helping things. I blog more than I walk; and I don’t blog all that much.

Anyway, my labs are actually pretty good. Nothing is too out of line. My cyclosporine level is a little high, and the doc wants me to get more labs next week to check it again, to get a “true trough”, as she put it. The creatinine level is 1.7, not terrific, but not too bloody awful. I am trying to be more careful of salt and sodium, and to drink more water. Maybe that number will improve.

The harder thing for me to deal with is chronic depression. Looking at my medications, it’s not a big surprise. Cyclosporine, prednisone, Procardia, Enalipril, all of those can increase the tendency towards depression. And I am my parents’ son; worriers and fretters…and in my Dad’s case, a paranoid. I’m doomed.

My friends tend to call me Eeyore. I wonder why?

Sing the anthem, don’t perform it.

It bothers me every time I go to a Braves game. I cringe at the first note, and I shudder at the first warble. And this past week, with bowl games inviting everyone from Hannah Montana to Frankie Valli to sing, and often butcher, the Star Spangled Banner, it’s gotten to me more and more.

There’s a right way to sing the National Anthem. It doesn’t involve jazz chords, blue notes and descant improvisations. It doesn’t involve vocal gymnastics, tearful melodrama, and yodeling, urban or bucolic. It doesn’t involve flashy costumes, thirty second cadenzas, and a funky back-beat. There is a right way: the way that allows fifty thousand people to join in singing.

Don’t get me wrong; putting a little…spin on the song can be pleasing enough, in the right circumstances. On a CD, perhaps, or at a theatrical venue, such as the [Nauseatingly Endless] Awards Ceremonies in Hollywood or New York. But not at sporting events. Sporting events belong to us, the common citizens. It’s not about the singer. It’s about the song.

Let me put it to you this way: have you ever been at a ballgame, maybe when a military band plays the National Anthem? Or when someone simply sings it straight, without the frills? Fifty or sixty thousand people join in, some beautifully, some heroically off-key, blending their voices together in a crescendo for the words “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave”, and complimenting the big finish with a round of applause that includes and acknowledges every single soul in the grandstand. It’s something no singing star, not Whitney, nor Mariah, nor even Elvis himself, can upstage.

That’s the right way to sing the National Anthem.

E Pluribus Unum; from many, one. From many disparate individual voices, one song.