Groping for Focus

What I've Done Over the Past 11 Years With My Gift

2014-09-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

On this date in 2003 I had my second kidney transplant. The first one failed earlier that year. Unlike the first time, the second one came from a living donor not related to me. The date was set and I focused on it with anticipation. There was no waiting for the phone to ring, no mad dash to the hospital. It's one aspect of my donor's generosity that is often overlooked--the fact that I didn't have to live with so much uncertainty leading up to the big event.

Me and my donor, Connie, summer 2003

After six months of hemodialysis, which made my vision worse (long story) and having to stay with family because I was too sick to be on my own, my life in suspended animation was about to end. It was as if someone had hit the Pause button and on September 4, 2003 someone hit that button again to restart my life.

Soon after being released from the hospital I fell into a deep depression. Now I know that it sometimes happens to people after a major surgery. That may have been part of it, but for me it had more to do with losing a significant part of my vision while on dialysis. I’d lost vison before and I’d had kidney failure before, but never at the same time.

I was certain that I wouldn’t be able to do much with my life, even with a kidney transplant. Take a look at the list below and you’ll see just how wrong I was. Since 2003 I have:

Learned to live with less vision than I had when the latest round of kidney failure/dialysis/transplant began in early 2003.

Moved back to Fayetteville, where I worked at a full-time job for the first time since my vision loss began in the early 90s.

Joined a critique group and started my writing career.

Published my story of life with Type 1 diabetes and how I adjusted to the challenges it caused.

Published a book of humor about Northwest Arkansas—a place I know and love so well.

Survived cancer.

Traveled to Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Reconnected with dozens of old friends from both high schools I attended, as well as friends I knew in the various places I’ve lived since then, via Facebook.

Found d success in public speaking.

Recovered from a few hernia surgeries and gall bladder removal.

Learned to live with Type 1 diabetes again after my transplanted pancreas failed. It gave me 14 years of freedom and I still miss it.

Experienced the mental and emotional advantages/intensity of sorting through all my possessions and letting go of a lot of them.

Moved 2,000 miles and 2 time zones away, to Portland, Oregon just in time for my 50^th birthday.

Purchased my first smart phone and learned how to use it. No simple thing for someone with my eyesight and lack of patience with technology.

Learned how to navigate an unfamiliar but extensive transit system.

Those are all things I couldn’t have (or at least wouldn’t have) done without a working kidney. It hits the highlights but omits all the little things I have been able to do because of the generosity of another. I don’t know what the next 11 years will bring, but I know it won’t be dull.

Me August 20, 2014

Seeing Red: Braves, Chiefs, Redskins, and My Grandfather

2014-01-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

When I was 8 years old I learned three interesting facts, two of them about my family. The man we called Grandpa Elam was actually the father of the man we called Grandpa Jack. This made him my great-grandfather, a term I’d never heard before. The second thing I learned was that Grandpa Elam was an Indian. It was hard to believe because I never saw him wear feathers or war paint. The only time I ever saw him wear anything but faded overalls and a long-sleeve shirt was at his funeral a few years later. The third thing I learned was that modern-day Indians (now referred to as Native Americans) wear clothes just like everybody else.

There were two hit songs on the radio that summer. Both of them about Cherokees--Cherokee People by Paul Revere & the Raiders and Half Breed by Cher. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that some of my ancestors treated some of my other ancestors pretty badly.

But I tried to put that out of my mind and just enjoy the fact that it wasn’t hard for me to get a good tan.

My junior high mascot was The Indians. This made perfect sense because the only other junior high in town was The Cowboys. What better mascots for cross-town rivals? Now I had a connection to my school mascot. School spirit was a bit more personal for me. At sporting events and pep rallies the school band played the song Cherokee. It also made sense that our school colors were red and white. The only problem with that is whenever I wear something bright red I look like I have sunburn. Or like I’m blushing. Or both. The school colors at the university I graduated from were also red and white.

Sometimes I didn’t like the red that was always under the tan. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of being part Cherokee. Far from it. I just would have preferred some shade of tan or light brown.

But I still enjoyed tanning quickly and easily. You can almost see it get darker if I’m out in the sun for fifteen or twenty minutes. I don’t have to worry about burning within a few minutes like some people do. Thanks, Grandpa.

It’s not that people take one look at me and think, “He’s an Indian.” I ended up with blue eyes and enjoy all the privileges of a white American. There's Irish, Dutch, and plenty of English flaoting around in my DNA. But none of them have ever been oppressed in this country.

You can't always tell by looking if someone is part Cherokee. Photo source traveler.wordpress.com

A number of years ago there was a controversy about the Atlanta Braves fans doing “the tomahawk chop” at baseball games. Native American groups were upset about it. I didn’t understand why they had a problem with it. It was just some chopping motion people made.

I don’t remember if they had any problem with the name Braves. Brave is a compliment, right? The controversy quickly faded.

I’ve never heard of any controversy regarding the KansasCity Chiefs mascot. Chief isn’t an insult.

Redskin is a different matter. Some people don’t understand why it’s a big deal. You’ll never hear of a team named the Detroit Blackskins or the Houston Wetbacks. But somehow it’s OK for the Washington Redskins to keep using that name even after many people have voiced their opposition to it. Some sports announcers have wisely stopped using the term.

Redskin is defining a race of people solely by the color of their skin, as if nothing else matters. A chief is a person. A brave is a person. But a red skin in an object. It dehumanizes. It’s an archaic term left over from the days when, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

Probably the main reason why Washington has been able to get away with using this name for so long is because there aren’t enough Native Americans left to riot in the streets the way other ethnic groups have. This is especially true on the East Coast, where the British and then the American military did such a thorough job of killing them or pushing them out of the way. Here in flyover country, it’s common to find other Americans who are some fraction Native American like me.

When I started losing my vision it got harder to tell some shades of color apart. Blue has been the holdout. I can see a wide variety of blues. Greens, browns, and reds masquerade as each other. When my vision decreased again in 2003 the problem grew worse. The world isn’t black and white, but colors are muted.

It was mid-summer 2005 and the sun had ripened my skin just as it always has. I was wearing a light grey T-shirt and glanced at my arm. Next to that dull grey was this beautiful, earthy mixture of light brown, burnt orange, and copper. Two things happened at that moment. I got to enjoy a rich shade of color I hadn’t seen in a few years and I truly fell in love with the color of my skin. It’s just too bad it took being deprived of brilliant colors and wearing a grey shirt to make me appreciate what was right there in front of me—on me—all along.

I wonder if a paint store could match a color of paint to me. Now I feel like I could have a paint swatch named after me. I claim it—all of it—the tan, the pink, the white, and the red that went into making this American mutt.

Oh, Washington. When your politicians and dysfunction aren’t pissing us off, your team mascots are. In both cases it’s due to your unwillingness to look beyond the bubble where you hide and ignore the rest of us. I know you’ve already bought all that merchandise with Redskins on it. But you can donate it to poor people in Africa who have no idea what any of it means. Every year, thousands of garments proclaiming a certain team to be the champion of their league are manufactured in advance in anticipation of jubilant fans snatching them up. But there can only be one winner and those unused T-shirts end up being worn by people in countries where football just means soccer. So don’t tell me you can’t do anything with all that stuff.

This could be your opportunity to pick a mascot honoring your city’s history like San Francisco’s 49ers. Or you could give a nod to the heritage of some of your residents like Minnesota’s Vikings. I’ve got it! You could do both with the Washington Blowhards.

Is It Time to Move Thanksgiving?

2014-01-02T12:15:00.002-08:00

Happy 2014. Now all of the holidays are behind us. The Christmas decorations have been taken down, the New Year celebrations are over and resolutions are fresh in our minds. Thanksgiving seems like a distant memory, even though it was barely a month ago. We blame it on the whirlwind of activity since then, but maybe there’s another reason why it’s blurry in our minds.

It’s being eaten by Christmas.

Last year Thanksgiving had the nerve to occur on November 28^th, which cost the American consumer SIX WHOLE DAYS of shopping convenience. But, some retailers took a bigger bite out of Thanksgiving by opening that day. We saw it coming. They’ve been looking at it and drooling for years, taking a bigger portion and thinking nobody was paying attention. You know—like Aunt Helen thinking nobody noticed here sneak an extra dinner roll or eat a second piece of pecan pie.

I guess we can’t blame them. Thanksgiving is so good everybody wants a taste. Everybody, that is, except the hordes of people camping for days on end in front of the big box stores, hoping to lead the charge in shopping battle known as Black Friday.

But Black Friday has turned in Grey Thursday. I guess if you’re being forced by your employer to skip that time with your family and friends so you can ring up sales for greedy, often violent consumers, Grey Thursday is the right term for the holiday formerly known as Thanksgiving.

I know I’m going to sound like a crotchety old man for talking about the 1980s when I worked in retail. The stores were closed on Thanksgiving but we still got paid something for that day, depending on the average number of hours we worked per week. Black Friday meant we opened an hour early and closed an hour later than usual. There were no stampedes, pepper spray, injuries, or parking lot tent cities. Yet, somehow, people got their Christmas shopping done.

Here’s one reason why people in other countries hate us: those videos that go viral that show Americans shoving each other out of the way and trampling each other like their lives depended on being the first one to lay their hands on a Play Station. We don’t have soccer hooligans. We have competitive shopping hooligans. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

I propose we move Thanksgiving before it is absorbed by Christmas. Maybe early October would be far enough away to save it, though I’m not even sure about that. Stores already have Christmas decorations up at Halloween, which is downright creepy when you think about it.

Some might argue November is the traditional time tor Thanksgiving, but you can buy turkey, cranberries, canned pumpkin and everything else you need year-round thanks to canning and freezing. There’s nothing traditional about how the holiday is currently observed.

The day was set aside to be thankful for what you have. A good way to do that is with a feast, not working in a crowded store for minimum wage, waiting on people who haven’t bathed in a week because they camped outside for a week.

I’m not trying to be morally superior here. I’ve been just as guilty as anyone about stuffing my face and having my tryptophan coma in front of the TV without a shred of gratitude. But, in recent years I’ve made a conscious effort to spend at least part of the day feeling thankful.

Black Friday stampede. Photo: nydailynews.com

Another reason to move Thanksgiving: winter weather. Every year we see new stories about people stuck in airports or their cars because snow or ice crashed the party. Here in the northern hemisphere the weather can do some tricky things that time of year. It only adds to the stress some people have over the holidays. Let’s have Thanksgiving at a time of year when over the river and through the woods can’t turn into over the ice and through the blizzard.

Think of Thanksgiving as a car parked next to a big box store that’s being expanded. Move it or lose it.

We Lost Two Humanitarians That Week

2013-12-17T14:57:00.000-08:00

There are some people who were born to help others. Not just a few, but multitudes. A couple of weeks ago, the world lost two of them. One was Nelson Mandella. I don’t need to tell you about him. A Google search turns up 1.5 billion results. I’m going to tell you about someone lesser known, but who made an impact of countless lives, including mine.

He was Don Williams. No, not the country music legend, just somene well-knowd in and around Greenwood, Arkansas.

He and his wife, Ann, were the first friends my parents made when we moved to the small town when I was almost 2 years old. They and their three kids are part of the ever-shrinking group of people who knew me since before I can remember. They’ve been like an uncle and aunt to me ever since. The two families often went on camping trips and other activities together.

When I was in 1^st grade, Santa Claus knocked at our door. My brother, Mike, was three years old then and we were both ecstatic. Santa sat on in front of the fireplace and we took turns sitting on his lap to tell him what we wanted. I noticed Santa had shoes just like Don’s and thought Don must really know how to pick a good pair of those if he bought the same ones Santa wore.

The next year at Halloween the Williams family decorated their 3 bedroom ranch house as a haunted house. They didn’t even charge people to go through it. It was the early 70s. Tmes were different and Greenwood was much smaller then.

Even after my family moved to Fayetteville a few years later, we never lost touch with them. When we moved back seven years later, the friendship with them was like we’d never been gone.

In 1998 I was listed for a kidney/pancreas transplant. When Don and Ann found out I needed to raise $50,000 because the pancreas wouldn’t be covered by Medicare, they organized a fund-raising committee. A couple of weeks later, the first event took place. They worked at that one and several others.

On that life-changing day in April, 1998 when I got The Call that a kidney and pancreas match was available, they actually beat the surgeon, who had to harvest the organs at a hospital a couple of hours away, to Oklahoma City. More importantly, they waited with my parents during the 7 hour surgery.

When I woke up in ICU, the first two faces I saw were those of my parents. The next two were Don and Ann. How appropriate that they were there when I stopped being diabetic. They drove two hours to visit me in the hospital when I was first diagnosed in 1977.

I presented Don and Ann with the Greenwood Citizens of the Year award in October, 1998. Pictured from left are Don, Ann, my mom, me, and my dad.

The list of humanitarian deeds Don did is long. Even those closest to him probably couldn’t name them all. Most of them had to do with helping those less fortunate. Much of it was part of the United Methodist Church. Others were as part of other organizations or on his own.

Is it fair to compare Don to Nelson Mandella? Well . . . yeah. Okay, he never spent time behind bars, justly or not and his impact was on a much smaller scale. But they shared a spirit of selflessness. They both did all they could to lift up others. Don was a Christan and the embodiment of the phrase “faith in action.”

I’ve often wondered if people who die around the same time are more likely to run into each other in the hereafter. Maybe there’s some kind of orientation they do, kind of like freshman orientation at college. Or maybe kindred spirits are naturally drawn to each other there. I can picture Don in heaven, swapping notes with Nelson Mandella.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost someone who had a positive impact on my life. I know from experience that one of the best things you can do to keep someone’s memory alive is by doing things they did. It doesn’t’ matter if you’re as good at it as they were. Do it in rememberance of them and you just might feel their presence. Since I’m talking about humanitarians, you know what I’m going to say next.

Uplift others whenever you can.

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Not All Urinals Are Created Equal

2013-11-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

It’s National Toilet Day. What are you doing to celebrate? To mark the occasion I’m writing about a fixture similar to the toilet—the urinal. Since reading about a study last week by Brigham Young University, I’ve been thinking much more about urinals lately. It’s actually an interesting article, with terms like satellite droplets, which has a nice science fiction ring to it. There’s even a video. The results of the urinal splash-back study will be presented Nov. 24 at the American Physical Society Division of FluidDynamics meeting in Pittsburgh.

Ladies, you may think this article has nothing to do with you, but if you have a husband, boyfriend, brother, or son in your home, this newly discovered information might just create a little more peace and harmony in your life.

Of course, it would be helpful if you just installed a urinal in the house. It’s been done. I know someone who bought a house from a family with five boys and the bathroom had a toilet and a white porcelain urinal next to it. I attended a New Year’s Eve party there a while back and I’m sure that urinal got quite a workout and made the post-party cleanup less disgusting.

I’ve often heard women comment on how filthy public Men’s Rooms are. I’m not sure why they were ever in one in the first place. I’ll assume it was by mistake. That’s happened to me, but I have an excuse—I’m legally blind.

Gargoyle urnilas. bestwestern.co.uk

I’ll let you seated pissers in on a couple of secrets about the mess around urinals. The first one isn’t a big secret. If men don’t have to clean the bathroom, we really don’t care that much about aim. This is especially true if the one having to clean it is a stranger who will be doing that long after we’re gone. Don’t get all self-righteous, girls, I’ve had a job cleaning restrooms and you leave some really gross things behind. They just don’t smell like wee-wee.

The second reason is more of a progressive process. Let’s say the first guy to step up to the porcelain pee-catcher after the restroom has been cleaned shakes the dew off his lily and a drop barely misses it and lands on the floor a fraction of an inch in front of it. There it sits, glistening under the fluorescent lights all by its lonesome.

Until the next guy comes along.

It may be conscious or subconscious, but he stands back just a bit more than he normally would, not wanting to step on the last guy’s whiz. So, he ends up leaving a drop half an inch in front of the first one. The next dude follows suit until the end of the day, when guys are standing about three feet back and just hoping for the best.

Of course, some urinals are designed in ways that reduce the odds of this trend even getting started. Some of them, instead of the standard rectangle, are sort of round and have a part in front that protrudes an extra couple of inches. One could sit on it and rest, if one were so inclined. This type is comforting to use. It reaches out to meet you halfway, as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’m here to support you and catch it all.”

In the last twenty years, there has been an increase in urinals made of stainless steel. I’ve never tested this theory, but my guess is they are more indestructible than porcelain and less likely to retain odor. This urinal says, “This isn’t your father’s urinal. This is the 21^st century. Now you’re pissing in style.” The shiny stainless steel looks more like it belongs in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant than a bus station men's room. That up-to-date engineering just makes any man want to respond with a little more . . . um . . . precision.

Speaking of your father’s—more like your grandfather’s—urinal. There is something to be said for the classic elegance of the roomy pissoir of the early-to-mid twentieth century. I’m talking about the early models that start at the floor and come up to chest-level. You stand in it as much as in front of it. Many of them have a flat top so you can set a drink on them. Back before smoking was banned in most public places it was common to see a built-in ashtray. A guy could drink, smoke, and take a leak all at the same time. Now that’s multitasking.

Ask any male what his least favorite type of urinal is and he’ll tell you it’s the trough. These are common in bars, where drunks have terrible aim. If you’re lucky, one or both end positions will be unoccupied when you walk in. Then you get a tiny bit of privacy, or at least the illusion of it. This is no place for the pee shy—or the insecure. There will be comparisons taking place. Everyone accepts this, especially the . . . um . . . gifted. If it’s crowded and you can’t wait another minute, you’ll have to squeeze in, shoulder to shoulder. The piss trough is The Great Equalizer. You might see everyone from a little boy standing on tip-toes to reach it to an old man who looks like he might topple into it. You can expect to leave with a little of your piss-mate’s spray on your pants. Everyone accepts this, too, as long as it wasn’t intentional.

Now that this exciting discovery about splash back has come to light, we can sit—make that stand—back in anticipation of how it will impact the brave new world of urinal design.

The Gratitude Rollercoaster

2013-11-17T17:35:00.000-08:00

The other day I had a great day trading stocks. I flipped a stock that rose quickly. It was the most profitable fifteen minutes of my life. The euphoria had me pacing around the room, yelling, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and making whooping sounds. What a great way to start a day.

The next day I noticed that same stock rocketing upward and bought it, only to see it collapse. In a panic I dumped it. Then it shot up higher than ever. I ended up giving back about one-third of my profit from the day before. And I felt really, really stupid.

Sure, there was still a nice chunk of change left over. But nobody likes feeling stupid, especially when it costs a few hundred dollars. This and a few other minor irritants dampened my mood. It wasn’t a terrible mood. I’d give it a C- if moods had a report card.

A short time later I went to a checkup with my oncologist. When I arrived I saw the waiting room was packed.

“Great. I’m going to have to wait a long time,” I thought pessimistically. But within three minutes I was called back for my blood draw. Then I had an even shorter wait to see the doctor.

But, that brief time in the waiting room was enough to remind me of how bad I used to feel when I had cancer and waited to have lab work done and see the doctor. Looking around, I saw some pretty sick people and their loved ones sitting there with them. It was never hard for me to realize cancer patients felt awful whenever I saw them. This time I knew how they felt.

Three years ago right now I was dreading chemotherapy, which began the Monday after Thanksgiving. The cancer was diagnosed the first week of November, which meant the entire month was spent with a dark cloud over me.

Fasten your seatbelt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Aside from losing weight, my hair, and my lunch, I knew little else about the side effects of chemo. I tried to prepare myself physically, mentally, and emotionally as best I could.

Those few minutes waiting to see the oncologist upgraded my mood to an A.

I don’t have cancer! There is nothing for me to dread.

The Most Attractive American Accent

2013-10-23T14:58:00.001-07:00

This morning there was a brief mention on NPR about a survey by Cupid.com that said the Southern drawl is the most attractive North American accent. If that’s true, why do so many of y’all make fun of those of us who have it? Is it petty jealousy?

A realistic Southern accent isn’t as easy to mimic as it might seem. I’ve cringed at TV actors hired more for their looks than acting ability that tried to do it and failed. I doubt some of them have ever even been to the South.

As the product of a “mixed marriage”—one Southern parent and one Midwestern—I was aware of regional accents from an early age. Dad was the only one from his side of the family to wander below the Mason-Dixon Line. The rest stayed in the Midwest or went out West. I could

Sexy, southern, and supernaturel. Bill Compton and Sookie Stackhouse from HBO series True Blood.

expect some teasing at family gatherings. But I learned how to handle it with grace by watching how my mother dealt with it.

When I was 10, my family vacationed near St. Louis. We stayed at a campground that had a pool. There was a slide and I remember a teenage girl, about 7 or 8 years older than I was, in line on the ladder behind me. She pinched and tormented me mercilessly because she liked

Thanks to the 1980s hit series Dukes of Hazard, shorts made from cut off jeans are known as "Daisy Dukes."

hearing me say, “Quit!” which came out sounding like “Qweeeyut!” In retrospect, I should have kicked her in the face. I was positioned for it. But, she correctly assumed I was too much of a Southern gentleman to do a thing like that. And for all I knew she had an army of other teenage girls from Illinois ready to do some kind of aquatic Civil War re-enactment on me at the swimming pool.

My first year after college, I lived in Tampa, which is only Southern geographically, not culturally. All those transplanted Yankees teased me, too, but without the pinching. It was there that I was surprised to hear five words linked together in a way I never expected.

“Your Southern accent is sexy.”

Of course I just laughed because I assumed it was a joke. It wasn’t. I heard it again when I lived in Kansas City, MO. There was also quite a bit of teasing—some of it friendly, some of it downright hateful.

Ellie May Clampit of the 1960s TV series The Beverly Hillbillies proved hillbillies can be sexy if they have all their teeth.

I’ll admit that, at times, I’ve consciously (and more often subconsciously) altered the degree of my drawl depending on the circumstances. When I need to sound smart, I cram Dixie in a box. When I need to be charming, I trot out the magnolia and mint julep until I sound like one of Scarlet’s suitors in Gone with the Wind.

Northerners eat it up. The farther from the South they’re from, the more susceptible they are to it. Sure, they may tease and mock you for it, but they’ll do that while bending over backward to

Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara from Gone with the Wind.

do what you ask. Just be sure to sprinkle in plenty of phrases like, “if you don’t mind,” “I’d appreciate it an awful lot,” and “you’re so kind.”

So, let ‘em make fun of us. It’s only the conscious part of their brains trying to protest while the subconscious part is being spellbound by the combination of Southern charm and words they have to work a little harder to understand.

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Blindaversary

2013-09-25T16:22:00.001-07:00

It seems like a lifetime ago. At twenty-two years, I suppose it is a lifetime. The anniversary almost slipped up on me this year. But, this uncanny and often irritating ability I have to remember dates and even days of the week they happened—always pops up sooner or later. This year, September 25^th falls on a Wednesday, just as it did in 1991.

The week before, I’d had a dye test where they photographed the blood vessels in back of my eye after a yellow dye was injected into a vein in one of my arms. Then I nervously waited for them to call with the results.

They called me at work that Wednesday morning. “You have diabetic retinopathy. If you don’t have laser treatments right away you could lose all your vision.”

Outside my office, my co-workers went about their business. If someone’s world comes crashing down around them and nobody else hears it, did it really happen? Apparently so.

I needed air. I needed space. My office was closer to the back of the building. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the alley, trying to catch my breath. The intense Austin sun felt like it would cook me alive.

Home. Just get home. Now.

I found my way to the front parking lot, got in my truck, and drove to my apartment.

What am I going to do now?

I had only been there a few months. My health insurance wasn’t due to start until October 1^st. Just a couple of months earlier, I discovered my kidneys were failing. This news was like a hammer driving a nail all the way in. Any pretense I had that maybe, just maybe I could stay in Austin and make it all work was gone. After Tampa, Kansas City, and Dallas, I’d finally a place—the place—I wanted to stay. It was so much like the quirky college town where I grew up but with big city amenities. My paychecks were increasing. After laying the groundwork, the accounts I’d opened were really starting to produce sales. Life was on a steady upswing. Well, except for failing kidneys.

My parents were anxiously waiting to find out the results of the test. I called them and we made plans for them to drive to Austin the first weekend in October to help me pack up and move back in with them. Life as I knew was coming to an end, but at least I wouldn't have to face it alone. Still, as the oldest kid, I felt guilt at being a burden on them.

Since then, some of my worst nightmares came true. Some amazing blessings rescued me. I’ve had to pick myself up and go forward countless times.

When I want to torture myself, I try to imagine what life would have been like if my health hadn’t failed and I’d been able to stay in Austin. I’ve been back twice—in 1996 and 2001. Each time, it was so much bigger than before. From what I hear, it’s much more expensive and resembles Dallas and Houston more than the place I remember.

There are two things I was good at then and, thanks to professional guidance and practice, am even better at now. Writing and visual art. There are some gifts that vision loss can dull, but never take completely away as long as there’s some vision left.

In the months that followed me leaving my job, selling most of my things, and returning to Arkansas, I had plenty of time to sit around my parents’ house and ponder the future. There was one thing I vowed to do over and over again: surpass the expectations of people who thought I wasn’t capable of much anymore. I approached my new reality with the same tenacity I’d used to support myself in college and graduate in four years, even after changing majors and watching some of my friends give up.

I run into trouble when I expect things to be as easy as they are for people who can see fine. Sometimes it turns to resentment, which is as unproductive and unhealthy as guilt—another emotion that invades my mind when I remember the mistakes I made as a young diabetic in my teens and twenties.

On this day in 1991, the sense of fear and loss had me wondering if I would ever accomplish anything. I assumed that my skills and abilities would be frozen where they were then, as a 27 year-old who had no idea what he really wanted to do with his life.

Back in 1991, it would have helped me to know that before I was halfway through my forties, it would be the most productive decade of my life (so far).

In 1991 it would have given me such relief to know that by the end of that decade, I would no longer be diabetic.

In 1991 I would have been overjoyed to know that ten years later, after eye hemorrhages, invasive procedures and procedures, I would create a large piece of art like this.

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On A Lovely Day in September

2013-09-11T07:16:00.001-07:00

For the past few weeks, I’ve been posting YouTube videos of obscure and forgotten hits from previous decades on my personal Facebook page. This week’s selection, Lovely Day by Bill Withers, deserves some explanation. It’s the twelfth anniversary of 9/11, which started out as a lovely day in Little Rock, where I lived in 2001. It’s rare for the weather in New York and Little Rock to be exactly the same, but it was a cloudless day there as well. The stiffling, sticky heat of summer was gone. It made the air feel lighter. People want to get out on a day like that, but instead I sat in front of the TV, just like most Americans did. Such an ugly thing wasn't supposed to happen on such a lovely day.

At lunchtime, I needed to be around other people, so I walked a couple of blocks to the River Market, which was a small food court in a restored old building. I took my lunch outside to one of the tables under a big pavillion where a farmers market is held on Saturdays. On a sunny day like this, all the tourists and office workers out there would sound like a flock of birds chattering. But there were only a few tables occupied by small groups of people with stunned expressions, speaking quietly. I wondered if my face looked like that and I thought, "This is all wrong. It should be cold and cloudy on a day like this. The weather should match everyone's mood."

I worked in the Stephens Building. At 40+ stories, it’s the second-tallest building in Arkansas. It was evacuated and I had an unpaid day off. That night was cool enough to have the windows open in my loft apartment at a busy intersection downtown, where the Main Street Bridge crosses the Arkansas River. The quiet that night on the normally busy street was surreal. A car passed once every fifteen or twenty minutes. Remember, this was before Facebook and Twitter. If you wanted to know what was going on, you had to watch TV. CNN and all the major networks had live coverage. We were all joined together by the common experience of watching and worrying.

Fast forward to the Concert for New York City. It was a fund-raising event for New York and a much-needed pep rally for everyone, featuring performances by musicians and speeches by New York’s finest and bravest. The nation was united in a way I haven’t seen before and certainly not since. The anger and sadness were palpable. Some of the performances touched my soul.

They showed a video that I’ve thought of countless times since then. It showed New Yorkers going about their day. Some of them were smiling. It showed the diversity and character of the city. Watching it that night, I was lifted up by it. I realized New York was going to be OK. The country would be OK, too. I thought the choice of Lovely Day was perfect for it. I was in junior high in the late 70s when it was a hit. At the time, I thought it was just OK, with no strong opinion of it. Thanks to that video, I love the song.

I invite you to stop what you’re doing and watch this. Turn off all the TV, the stereo, and ignore all the noises from your smart phone. Yes! You can do this for the five minutes and 28 seconds it takes to watch this video. Pay attention to it. Let yourself be uplifted by it.

UPDATE: The video I wanted to share is now blocked, which is a sad thing because it could have uplifted so many. I could view it a few days ago when I wrote this post and embedded the video, so the decision to block it was made in the past few days. Here's another video of Lovely Day so you can at least hear it. Maybe they will make the other vedeo available again in the future.

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10 Years!

2013-09-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago right about now I was in surgery and so was my kidney donor. After months of tests, she was found to be a suitable donor. Her offer to give me a kidney literally came out of nowhere. Well, that’s how it seemed. Actually, it came from God. Only a few weeks after finding out my first transplanted kidney failed and I started hemodialysis (a date with misery three times a week), someone I’d never met was offering to give me a kidney.

First there was the jolt of losing the kidney. Then there was the joyful jolt of a possible way out of that nightmare. My emotions were like a pinball being bounced all over the place.

But, first we had to find out what her blood type was.

Over the next several months, one hurdle after another was cleared. An infection in the dialysis port under my collarbone delayed the surgery for several weeks.

I’ve been under general anesthesia for more surgeries and procedures than I can (or want to) count. Coming out of it, reality swims into focus much more gradually than when you wake up in the morning. It seeps into your head as, one by one, your senses come back to life. From there, it spreads lower to your arms and legs. They can feel the blanket covering them and the temperature in the room, but they are too heavy to move. At this point, you’re not sure you want to wake up further, because the place the surgeon cut and stitched is about to hurt, if it doesn’t already.

Then a post-op nurse says your name and asks how you feel. All you can do is mumble or groan because your tongue feels thick from all the drugs. Your throat is scratchy from being intubated for hours. You want to say, “I feel like I was hit by a freight train.” They spoon feed you ice chips, which melt on your tongue, waking it up. The cool water soothes your throat.

All of that happened that day ten years ago. But this time, I woke up feeling more joy than I thought anyone could feel when they’re that groggy. I joked with the nurses—something I’ve never done before or since at that stage of recovery. Maybe the difference was having an organ from a living donor. Maybe it had something to do with the lively, spirited nature of my donor. It’s a question I’ll never be able to answer with any certainty.

In almost every living donor transplant, the kidney starts working immediately. Somehow, I knew it had this time, even before the doctor confirmed it.

Over the past ten years, I’ve had cancer, gall bladder surgery, a major hernia surgery where they put a big sheet of mesh under all my abdominal muscles, and last year the Type 1 diabetes made an unwelcome return.

The kidney held up through all of it. It still works as well as it did in 2003. At ten years, it has lasted twice as long as the first one from a deceased donor did.

Just after the transplant, the additional vision loss put a damper on the post-transplant euphoria I normally would have had. It has made my life much more of a challenge than it’s ever been. Only recently have I realized that without her stepping forward so quickly to give me a kidney, I would have waited much longer. That means I would have been on dialysis much longer and my eyesight would have kept getting worse. I might have ended up losing all of it.

I admit that too often, with all the hassles of being a middle-aged, legally blind guy adjusting to diabetes again, I forget that I’ve been given a miracle.

My resolution at this major milestone is to remind myself of that fact more often—especially when life is stressful and scary. The kidney, in addition to keeping me alive and off a dialysis machine, is living proof that God loves me and wants me to be happy.

Read Jim's other blog ConfessionsOfABornAgainDiabetic.Wordpress.com http://confessionsofabornagaindiabetic.wordpress.com/

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My Youth (Circa 1986) Is Calling Me

2013-07-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

It’s a quiet Saturday night and I want to get out. The problem is all my friends are my age, which means too old to call up and say, “Let’s go out and find some excitement.”

Not only that, but I don’t think I have the energy to spend more than an hour anywhere tonight. I don’t want to go out, but I don’t want to stay in. So I just sit here feeling old. I’ve been listening to music from the 80s on YouTube. My youth is taunting me from the far side of a canyon 20+ years wide. That little smartass. I want him to shut up.

Sometimes his bragging and boasting are pretty broad in scope. Other times, he’s very specific about his exact location, mocking me with memories of it. Tonight he’s shouting at me from 1986—a time when I felt especially bold and ready for a new adventure every day. By early July, I’d been out of college a couple of months and in Tampa only a month. That young version of me had no real plan, no idea what his next move would be. But a fresh sheepskin and a wallet full of shiny credit cards keep that from bothering him. These are his talismans, his shields from worry proof that he was a full-fledged adult. He didn’t have these things only a few months earlier. This was the time he dreamed of for four years. Now he would savor it and take his place in the post-collegiate world..

Never mind that he doesn’t have much money and the humidity in Tampa is almost a hundred percent. He’ll go out because it’s Saturday night and he’ll have so much fun it won’t matter that his clothes cling to him like they're afraid he'll go off and forget them at the nightclub or wherever else his whim might lead him.

If it’s July, 1986 he still loves the latest hit by Journey called Girl Can’t Help It. It won’t end up being one of their biggest hits, but it will end up being his favorite song by them. Maybe it was the steady, strong drum beat, like his steady, strong young heartbeat.

He'd be deciding what to put on with his stereo turned up loud (to hell with the neighbors upstairs) playing his favorite Top 40 station, called Q Zoo. Ironically, he's sliding into a pair of button fly Levi's 501s with a 28 inch waist and a madras shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He surveys himself in a mirror and is quite please, thanks to his newfound habit of working out at a gym. His confidence has seen a huge uptick. This while We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off is on. It seems this song is always on when he's getting dressed to go out or in the car headed out to prowl.

This song, World Destruction, might fill the dance floor. He loves it and is pretty sure it isn't being played back in Arkansas.

He sees the movie Ruthless People and likes it as much as this Luther Vandross song from the soundtrack.

Maybe 1986 stands out so much because my body enderwent a bit of a makeover. I found out i actually liked lifting weights and, even more surprising, it was working. I heard this song, The Other Side of Life, alot at the gym. It reminded me of what I was doing in Tampa.

By October, he's made several friends, almost all of them transplants from other states, just like himself. There's a big street party in Ybor City at Halloween. It's warm and people wear costumes leaving little to the imagination. He spots several other young people, all with perfect bodies, dressed up (or maybe I should say down) as Baby New Year. Twenty-two year old me has on old army pants, a green T-shirt, combat boots and a black bandana. Rambo. Word Up comes on and he climbs up on a 4-foot wall to watch the crowd dance in the intersection. He sheds his inhibitions, along with his T-shirt, and carefully dances on the wall. He feels free, alive, and fearless.

Invasion of the Wal Martians

2013-06-09T10:39:00.002-07:00

The Wal Mart shareholders meeting and extravaganza was last week. Once a year thousands of shareholders and associates (employees aka Wal Martians) converge at Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas campus here at Fayetteville. There are free concerts by some big names in entertainment. This year, Sir Elton John showed up. Celebrities also make surprise appearances. This year it was Hugh Jackman (who performed a song from Les Miserables) and Tom Cruise.

If you grew up here, as I did, it’s a bit mind-boggling that these people find their way here at all. It’s a testament to Wal Mart’s influence and deep pockets. Having the world’s largest retailer headquartered a few miles up the road adds a different layer of quirkiness to Faytown. The Big W has always been up in Bentonville, but it hasn’t always been the world’s largest retailer. If you've been here for a while it’s like having the goose that lays the golden eggs grow up from a gosling in your back yard.

I’ve just started writing a novel about Fayetteville that takes place just before and during shareholders week. It’s a quirky humor story I’ve had stowed in my brain for a few years now and the time feels right to start it. Friday night I took an information-gathering field trip to Dickson Street because I knew some Wal Martians would be there to dine out and cut loose after the last day of the event. I took a friend with good vision so he could point out weird and funny people.

Since my vision got worse ten years ago, there are few things I miss more than people-watching.

It was a perfect evening to be outside—low humidity and in the 70s. We ate outside on the balcony at Hog Haus—a perfect vantage point to observe Arkansas’ favorite street.

I wanted to talk to at least one foreign Wal Martian and I wasn’t disappointed. A table of British Wal Mart associates was at another table on the balcony. One young woman had on a blue T-shirt with a Superman logo on front and a red cape with writing on the back. It was something about the British version of Wallyworld and it was the ice-breaker I needed.

It turned out she was from Yorkshire, the same part of England my family came from a few hundred years ago. She chatted with us quite a while and I asked her if she’d seen Elton John before.

“No, he’s too expensive to see in England.” I loved the irony of her seeing a fellow Brit performing in Arkansas of all places. I wondered what the place must look like to all these foreign visitors. Then her friend from Manchester joined her. For a country around the size of Arkansas, the accent can change a lot from place to place. Her friend said something that didn’t even sound like English.

“What did she say?” I asked my friend.

They all laughed.

“She said a lot of people here can’t understand her.”

Later we ran into other English Wal Martians on the street asking for directions to a karaoke bar. Why, I wondered, would they want to hear karaoke with all these great bands performing? But I didn’t want to sound like I was looking down on their culture. I know Brits like to get drunk and sing in pubs over there. Hearing an English accent (I never encountered people from any other countries) added a bit of surreality to a street long known as a place where you might see or hear just about anything.

My biggest laugh came when some women told us they were from an area of England called The Midlands.

“You know—where the big rugby stadium is,” she said.

We never heard of that and tried to explain where The Midlands is.

“Well, I figured you weren’t from Midland, Texas,” I joked.

“No, if I was from Texas I’d sound like this…” Then she did (or tried to do) a Texas accent. I couldn’t understand what she said even after she repeated it for me. Trust me, it was hilarious.

By this time next year I plan to buy some Wal Mart stock so I can observe it all up close. I’d like to think I’ll be finished with the novel by then, but it’s unlikely. Part of the plot will require me to research a few things I don’t know much about. I wish that information gathering could be as fun as Friday was. Most of it will involve looking things up online.

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My Unusual Cinco De Mayo In 1998

2013-05-05T13:16:00.001-07:00

When I had the kidney/pancreas transplant, the kidney was slow to start working so I had to have hemodialysis treatments at the hospital until it started working on its own. Fir this, a port was attached to the blood vessels in my neck. There was a serious complication with the first one, which was done on Good Friday and led to a terrifying incident I write about earlier in the book. It had to be removed and the second port was placed there later that evening.

For three weeks it clung to my neck. The lines of the dialysis machines were fastened to it at each treatment and I couldn’t move my neck or head. It was like having an octopus grab me by the throat. Whiskers grew around it where it was too close for me shave. The port had a few dangling parts where the lines attached to it and where nurses injected medications. When I was able to start wearing my own clothes instead of a hospital gown, I had be extra careful putting on or taking off a shirt or else it would snag them.

It was still on my neck when I was released from the hospital because the kidney still wasn’t up to speed and I might need more dialysis treatments. Fortunately, the kidney started working soon after that and no additional treatments were needed.

Here’s the excerpt from What Didn’t Kill Me Made Me Stronger.

At one appointment at Dr. Henry’s office, Judy, his nurse, removed the port from my neck. On one hand, I was eager to have the thing off me. On the other hand, I was still very nervous about letting anyone touch my neck. The trauma of Good Friday was still fresh in my memory. She gently cut the sutures holding it in place while I sat as still as I could, wincing now and then from the slightest tug and gritting my teeth.
Is this what it’s like to get rid of a leech? Am I going to end up with a scar on my neck?
When I got back to my parents’ house, I finally got to take my shower. It was May 5th – exactly one month since my last shower. It made me a little nervous standing in the wet bathtub on my wobbly left leg, water cascading over the long surgical scar, which was still covered by a row of butterfly bandages. But for the first time in thirty days of doing the best I could with a wet washcloth, I really felt clean. After very carefully stepping over the edge of the tub, gently patting my tender torso dry, and getting dressed, I felt a hundred times better.

Read more excerpts from Jim's book What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger: How I Found Hope While Surviving Diabetes, Vision Loss, and Organ Transplant, published in April, 2013.

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The Mean Grocery Store Trick

2013-04-23T14:34:00.001-07:00

The grocery store where I shop recently rearranged all the items on their shelves. They said it was to make that store set up like the other three in town. It seems plausible, though I suspect some kind of marketing guru told them they’d sell more if certain items were at eye level or at end caps.

For the average person it was a bit discombobulating. But it’s turned me into a hungry rat frantically trying to find the cheese at the end of the maze.

They flipped the chips to the opposite end of the store and I still can’t find the cashews. On one recent trip I ended up pacing up and down each aisle chanting, “Croutons. Croutons. Croutons,” until a stock boy asked if he could help me find anything.

What once was a 30-minute trip for a couple bags of groceries has turned into an epic hunting expedition for sustenance. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if I could drive myself, but I have to catch a bus, so every second is valuable. More than once, I’ve had to prioritize, which meant leaving certain items behind.

Maybe that’s how we can cure America’s obesity epidemic. Rearrange grocery stores every few months so the non-essentials are passed up. It wouldn’t be good for the grocer’s bottom line, but it would be good for everyone else’s waist line.

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Happy Birthday to My Failed Pancreas

2013-04-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

You’ve been in there 15 years today. What an amazing time it has been. You worked hard, keeping my glucose normal until a year ago. That’s longer than the average transplanted pancreas lasts. During that time I never had a single problem with you. You went to work as soon as you were stitched in place. By the end of the day, a nurse in ICU would tell me those four words I never thought I’d hear, “You’re not diabetic anymore.” I drifted off to sleep feeling more free than I’d felt in 21 years, in spite of all the tubes and wires that tethered me to all sorts of medical equipment.

You worked beautifully every day, right up until you stopped making insulin altogether. I gave you quite a workout in those first few months, eating sweets to my heart’s content, just because I could.

You held up in spite of all the harsh chemicals in my bloodstream keeping my immune system from attacking you. You held up after the kidney failed and I had to get another. You held up when I had cancer and my body was flooded with toxic chemotherapy.

You gave me 14 years of a life I bid farewell to when I was only twelve. At that ender age I had to accept that I would be diabetic for the rest of my life along with the insulin shots, a strict diet, and a long list of possible (and scary) health problems that went with it. After several years with the disease, some of those scary health issues began. It looked like my life was on a long downhill slide. After doing peritoneal dialysis for 9 months and waiting for a kidney, I discovered a pancreas could be transplanted.

Just like that, I had to rewrite reality. The impossible was possible after all.

I wasn’t the only one praying for your arrival. Hundreds of people held fund-raising events to raise the $50,000 I needed to pay for you. Insurance paid for the kidney, but not you. I’m not exaggerating when I say you were much-anticipated by many.

You reminded me and so many others miracles do happen. Some of them have never met me in person. Who knew one small organ no larger than a deck of cards could impact so many?

Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without the surgeons, the young man whose life ended the day before, and his family who allowed you to be donated to me. Because of that, my relationship with you was bittersweet right from the beginning. This is the first “re-birthday” I’ve celebrated since your retirement last year. Now it’s more bittersweet than ever. Yesterday, the anniversary of my donor’s death, I lit a white candle in his honor just as I’ve always done.

The kidney I received the same day I welcomed you to my body has been replaced and one day you will be as well. Then there won’t be any part of that young man who saved my life in there anymore.

But the impact of that day—the most life-altering event of my life—will live on for the rest of my life.

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Remembering That Intense Easter A Few Days After the Transplant

2013-03-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

It's Easter and I keep going back in my mind to 15 years ago. Here's an excerpt from What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger about an Easter Sunday when life was precarious.

The following day, Easter, my blood tests showed that I was anemic, and I had to have a blood transfusion. It made me nervous to get someone else’s blood, though it had been several years since anyone had contracted HIV from a transfusion. It wasn’t the same as getting someone else’s organs because I could actually see the blood in the bag hanging from the IV pole. It took much longer for a unit of blood to drip into my vein than it did for a typical IV bag.

It’s Easter. This day is about resurrection. Last week, that guy died, but parts of him literally rose from the dead and continue to live – not just inside me, but probably in other people as well. By dying, he saved our lives. Who got his heart? His lungs? The other kidney? How are they doing?

Tim and Mom were both as bored as I was during the transfusion. They talked in the waiting area at the end of the hall when I wanted to take a nap. Time moves much more slowly in Hospital Land over the weekend. It’s just one of the many surreal differences between that place and the outside world, where weekends pass in the blink of an eye. I was glad Mom had someone to keep her company for a while.

By mid-afternoon, Tim was on his way back to Austin, and the stifling boredom of a Sunday afternoon in Hospital Land was in full force. Weekends in hospitals are an especially dull time for patients and their visitors, because there’s very little activity. There are much fewer doctors in the building, and clerical and other support staff normally have weekends off. Fewer surgeries, procedures, and tests occur, so the departments that do those things have fewer staff working those days.

Hospital Land is like some sort of hybrid between a hotel and a minimum security prison during the weekend. Televisions babble at empty chairs in waiting rooms. The halls are quiet and deserted. There are more empty rooms than during the week. Doctors tend to discharge patients on Fridays if possible. On the weekends, there’s nothing to do but sit … and wait. Knowing that it was even more boring for those who visited me gave me a pang of guilt. Inflicting boredom on someone is, in my opinion, a serious offense, and now I was guilty of it. After all of these years, there are times during an occasional Saturday or Sunday when I stop and think ‘Someone is having a really boring afternoon in a hospital somewhere.’ That stems from the time I spent in the hospital after my surgery.

I was also uncomfortable during that time. Most of my discomfort was due to the fact that the new kidney hadn’t yet started working very well. Still, there was a reason for that, given everything it had been though. It had survived a serious car accident that killed its original owner, then been surgically removed and placed in a container with ice. It had traveled by car from Tulsa to Oklahoma City, where it was handled and examined. It had been surgically attached into the body of a stranger. It had been flooded with high doses of very potent man-made chemicals that, while protecting it from a healthy immune system, were at the same time very harsh on the organ. This new addition to my body had been through a great deal of trauma.

“No wonder you don’t want to work,” I said to it. I focused on it, trying to communicate with it. I wanted it to know that in spite of all the harsh chemicals, it was wanted and welcome in my body. I told this ailing, confused new body part that I loved it and I wanted it to stay. I told it that I wanted it to be healthy and I would take care of it as best I could.

“I’m not giving up on you, so please don’t give up on me yet.”

I thought of the new kidney as a frightened orphan in a new and unfamiliar place. It would need constant reassurance that it was going to be all right, even if I wasn’t sure of that myself. From that day on, I sent my new kidney mental message of patience and love every day.

“I’ve waited a long time for you.” “I’m so glad you’re here.”

To the pancreas, I said, “Thanks and keep up the good work.”

This was where modern medicine left off and the mind took over. My belief in the mind/body connection would be a necessary tool to get me through this. And it was a belief that was about to be tested.

My body still carried too much excess fluid, so I wasn’t allowed to drink anything. A plastic cup of water sat on the rolling table, with a small plastic stick with a 1-inch-square sponge soaking in it. This was to moisten my lips and tongue without drinking any of the water. My lips and mouth were extremely dry because I still couldn’t breathe through my nose, which was clogged with dried blood. It surprised me how quickly the dry air in my hospital room had cracked the inside of my nose. The dryness of my mouth meant that I was using that small sponge as often as possible.

That Easter Sunday night was the longest of my life – and maybe Mom’s too. She slept for only a short time in the foldout bed. Most of the night she sat next to my bed, waiting to hand me a tissue to blow my bloody nose or help me with the sponge on the stick. I needed the sponge every few minutes, and almost never slept. The constant interruptions in the middle of the night didn’t help matters any. That’s how it is in Hospital Land. It seemed that once an hour, someone would come n to check my vital signs, or change the bag of my IV, or weigh me, or empty the bag of urine and measure the output, or give me pills to take. There was always something needing to be done to me. I would curse under my breath whenever one of these interruptions meant having to get out of bed. It was hard enough to get in and out of bed when I was alert. Untangling all of the tubes and pulling myself out of bed while sleepy, in the dimly lit room. was even more complicated and annoying.

“Wait, you’re tangled up.”

“I am?”

“Yes. Pull your arm back through here,” Mom or a nurse would say, holding the tubes open for me as I carefully guided my arm through a gap. Then I would take a step, only to feel the sting in my arm from my IV line being pulled in the wrong direction. Once freed from that entanglement, I would stand shakily on a scale. An aid would read my weight, which was always measured in metric units that had to be calculated into pounds before they made any sense to me. There was no way Mom could get any sleep when all of this was taking place.

The exertion of getting out of bed and back in caused me to breathe hard, which in turn dried out my mouth even more. Several times, we were settled back in our beds when the loud, shrill beeping alarm on the IV pole went off. Then we had to wait for the nurse to return and punch buttons on it to make it stop

At that point, I started to wonder if I would ever have full use of my leg and hands again. For the first time, I started to doubt my decision to have a transplant.

Maybe I was better off before. I never bargained for this.

That night felt like my trial by fire. It was as if God said, “Just how much do you want this?”

It means everything.

“Well, then, prove it.”

Maybe this was the tradeoff. In exchange for a much shorter than predicted wait for the pancreas and a relatively short wait for the kidney, I was being tested. This was a major life test, but there was no way to study for it. Determination alone would have to be enough.

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This Week's Book Excerpt

2013-01-20T10:13:00.001-08:00

This part is taken from What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger. It was in summer, 1992 after I had a vitrectomy. It's an eye surgery that removes blood inside the eye's vitreous fluid after a hemorrhage. After that, I never took fireworks for granted again.

Fireworks

The next vitrectomy was five days before my birthday. On the fifth day after such an eye surgery, the bandages come off permanently. For me, the most memorable gift that year was getting to take the bandage off my eye. As before, the world looked extremely bright and out of focus, though it was a big improvement from before the surgery. As before, I was also confident that my vision would continue to get better over the next couple of weeks. After that, my vision would remain at that level …at least until something else happened.

I don’t want to make you think I was pessimistic. The truth is I was as optimistic as ever. But it was optimism with an underlying foundation of realism. The jolt of the last eye hemorrhage had driven home an undeniable reality: I could lose my vision at any time, no matter how good it might get in the meantime. In some tiny, remote part of my brain, I understood that total blindness was a likely outcome in the end. It wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. Again, this wasn’t a pessimistic outlook. It was a survival instinct at work, telling me to be prepared. I didn’t want to be caught off guard again.

My days were spent taking long walks, watching TV, and listening to books on tape. But this time, I took more notice of the colors around me. They were more vibrant. My vision improved gradually, and I took full advantage of being able to see. Each day, I could see something that I couldn’t see the day before. My vision reached a level that I was happy with, even if it wasn’t back to where it was the year before.

Then my parents and I were invited to Don and Ann Williams’ fortieth wedding anniversary party on a riverboat docked on the Arkansas River at Van Buren. Dinner was served on the boat while we cruised up and down the river between Fort Smith and Van Buren. It was very enjoyable – the first fun thing I had done in a long time. Several members of their large extended family stopped by our table to ask me how I was doing and say how glad they were that I was there. It was good to be out of the house and out of the hospital, and able to look around without a bandage over my eye or a dark spot inside of it.

A music festival was happening on the Fort Smith side of the river while we were on the boat. After dark, they shot fireworks. All of us had finished eating, and we gathered at the rail of the boat and watched. For me, the sight was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. The show wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as far as fireworks go. It didn’t last longer than most. But I was getting to see it with my newly healed eye, and that changed everything. The bright colors of the starbursts high above us were clear as they lit up the night. The river below reflected the brilliant light, broken into hundreds of points of color on the waves. It was beautiful, and I didn’t take it for granted, even if it wasn’t quite as clear as it would have been a year before.

Tears of joy streamed silently down my face as I stood on the dark boat.

Just keep quiet. Don’t draw attention to yourself. It’s their anniversary, so don’t make this all about you.

Around me, other people made the usual sounds people make when watching fireworks.

“Can you see them OK?” asked Mom.

“Oh yes, I can see it all just fine.” I was beside myself. Something as simple as watching fireworks had filled me with joy. It may have been Ann and Don’s party, but these fireworks were meant for me. This was my reward for what I had been through. This was God. I just knew it.

That night, I vowed never to miss fireworks if I had a chance to see them. Never again would I take for granted the ability to look up at the dark sky and see a kaleidoscope of fire and color and smoke. From then on, it would be sacred. And since then, that’s exactly how it has been.

Read more excerpts from Jim's book at JimFairbanks.net http://www.jimfairbanks.net/id30.html.

Remembering Another January 12th

2013-01-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

Have you ever found yourself on the anniversary of an important occassion in your life and remembered it even more clearly because the weather was just like it was that day? That's the kind of day I'm having now. Yesterday, it was a sunny, un-winterlike day, about 70 degrees. Today, it's cold, dreary, and rainy, just like it was in 1998. Join me in my little time capsule taken from my book.

It was a cold, dreary, rainy day that January 12. My parents drove over, picked me up, and off we went to Oklahoma City. The giant complex of medical buildings loomed ahead of us when we got there. We parked and found our way through the maze of corridors to the transplant surgeon’s office.

The waiting room was large and crowded.

Have all these people had transplants? Are some of them waiting for that important call, just like I am?

I fought the urge to ask each one of them what their story was. Time dragged slowly until my name was called and a nurse led me to an examining room. What would this surgeon be like? I hoped he liked me. I hoped I would like him.

Then Dr. Squires entered the room. He had short, dark hair, wore the usual white physician’s coat, and stood a few inches shorter than myself. And I’m 5 feet 9 inches in boots. I don’t want to sound superficial, but it made him seem less threatening and intimidating than some doctors. It took only a few minutes for me to realize there had never been any reason to be intimidated. This was the most pleasant, humble doctor I’d ever met. Weren’t surgeons supposed to be conceited and think they were God? That was the reputation they had.

“The surgery will take about seven hours,” he told me. This came as no surprise. “The pancreas will go in your lower abdomen on the left side. The kidney will be on the lower right side. When it’s just a kidney transplant, it goes on the left.”

He explained more of the details to me. I sat there, in awe of how far medicine had advanced since 1977, when I was diagnosed with diabetes. What he was describing to me was a miracle. And the best part of it all was that he never said, “This is what we would do if you were a candidate for this surgery. But you’re not. Sorry.”

He continued with details of the surgery. “I’ll perform the pancreas transplant. Dr. Pennington will do the kidney. We’re easy to tell apart. He’s much taller than I am.” He smiled. Not only was he easy to talk to, he could laugh about his height – or lack thereof.

How could anyone not like this guy?

It came as a relief to learn that most of the tests I had undergone to be listed for the kidney at Hillcrest could be used for this surgery. I wouldn’t have to repeat them.

After the meeting, I practically ran to the waiting room to tell my parents all that I had learned. We walked to the elevator and I repeated it all, word for word when I could remember it, as breathless and excited as a kid. They both grinned. It had been a very long time since I’d seen them smile like that. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Edmond on the way back to Tulsa, where I ate fried shrimp, wondering how long it would be until I could walk into a restaurant and order dessert. Dr. Squires said I could expect a wait of six months to a year. This didn’t seem terribly long. I had already been on dialysis a little over nine months. He told me that being listed for two organs would mean that I racked up points on the waiting list twice as fast as when I was listed for one.

The rest of the way home, I peered out the window into the soggy landscape, trying to see the future in it as if it were a crystal ball. It was still a big mystery, but now it was much less frightening. It may have been a cold, grey day outside. But, inside, I was all warmth and sunshine. I had just received the best news of my life.

Read more excerpts from What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger: How I Found Hope While Surviving Diabetes, Vision Loss, and Organ Transplant at Jim's site JimFairbanks.net http://www.jimfairbanks.net/id30.html

Hurry Up and Wait, Wait and Hurry Up

2013-01-09T08:06:00.000-08:00

As publication of my book, What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger: How I Found Hope While Surviving Diabetes, Vision Loss, and Organ Transplant, gets closer, I will be posting excerpts here. They're glimpses into the ever-changing life of someone with diabetic complications. I'll explore subjects like sudden vision loss, deprression, waiting for an organ transplant, rejection, and hope. I'm going to start with a short one. Please leave comments and share with anyone who might relate to this.

Hurry Up and Wait, Wait and Hurry Up

Hurry up and wait. It’s a figure of speech describing what it feels like to be rushed into moving quickly, usually to satisfy someone else or a tight schedule, only to be forced to stop. It’s hard to switch gears at that point. If the same person who rushed us is the one making us wait, it can cause resentment. In our culture, hurrying is good and often expected, but waiting is bad.

Sometimes it’s the other way around. Wait and hurry up. If you’re waiting for an organ transplant, time moves in slow motion. It’s probably faster than time moves in prison. I know for a fact it’s faster than time moves when you’re in the hospital. But it’s waiting. It’s not like waiting in line, when you can see it moving forward and you can tell when it’s almost your turn. This kind of waiting is like gazing up at the midnight sky at the millions of stars out there. There’s no telling just how distant it all is.

Suddenly a shooting star speeds through the dark sky. It’s much closer than the other pinpoints of light. It’s much brighter and it’s moving faster. Your heart quickens. Now that vast, barely-moving backdrop of distant stars and galaxies is more in perspective. None of them are important anymore. That bright streak of light in front of you is all that matters.

Between One Transformative Year and the Next

2012-12-31T09:22:00.000-08:00

The world didn’t end in 2012, but it left many of us in a different situation than when the year began. That’s how it was for me, partly because I was determined to make it a differenty year, and partly due to some surprises.

To help make this a different year, I worked with a life coach who helped open my mind to new possibilities and eliminate stumbling blocks in my life. Before long, I felt a shift in my thinking and how I saw myself.

In March I had my first taste of success as aninspirational speaker when I took Second Place at a regional Toastmasters International speech. The award was nice, but the real payoff was having people tell me later how much my story had touched them.

A few months later I was asked to serve as president of the local Toastmasters slub. At first I shied away from the idea, but saw how it could help me grow in several ways in addition to speaking.

In May I attended an intense traning for people aspiring to get high-paying public speaking engagements. My mind lit up with all the information, ideas, and connections I made. It was my first time in L.A. and I had some extra free time to see some of the place. I loved it. Watch out, Los Angeles, I'll be back one day.

But I had a big health flare-up midway through theconference. I got so sick I had to be taken to the emergency room, where they discovered my blood sugar was through the roof. I was admitted so they could run tests on my transplanted pancreas. It looked fine, but I had several gall stones. The pancreas had just worn out. It was depressing to be hospitalized so far from home and learn that 14 years of non-diabetic freedom had ended.

I flew home, had my gall bladder removed, and tried to adjust to being diabetic again. I’m getting better at it. More about that in future posts.

In September I attended a book marketing seminar in Philadelphia but had time to do a little sightseeing too.

I attended the 30 year class reunions of both high schools i attended. It was really tough changing schools halfway through 11^th grade. Seeing both groups of classmates after all that time helped me put that part of my life in perspective. Time and maturity helped, but doing that at this stage of the game caused me to edit my memoir and soften the tone in that section. It also helped me rewrite history so that several people are better, more likeable people—including me.

My memoir! Ifinally finished it! I started writing it in 2006 and got sidetracked with some other writing projects and some health issues like cancer and whatnot. Now it’s being formatted and will be published soon.

That’s why I expect 2013 to be AT LEAST as transformative as 2012 was. This will be the year my life story will be put on display for anyone to read. It will be the year I do paid speaking engagements. It will be the year I watch my web site WhatMaesUsStronger.com grow and possibly launch the line of books related to it.

I’ll be cancer-free two years in early 2013, which means I can get on the transplant waiting list for a new pancreas.

2013 is the year I expect to come into my own and live up to my full potential.

Putting Myself Out There

2012-12-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

It’s done now. My memoir has been a work in progress for almost 7 years. To put it into perspective, that’s more than 3 times the gestation period of an elephant. Since starting it in early 2006 I’ve moved twice, endured the worst ice storm in state history, had a severe eye injury, survived cancer, had gall bladder surgery, and have adjusted to being diabetic again. I was working full-time back in 2006 but left that in late 2009 because it was just too stressful. I know, excuses, excuses. Part of that time I was just unfocused and unsure of what to do next.

“You have to blog.”

“You have to Twitter.”

“You have to Facebook.”

Those were only a few of the bits of advice I got along the way—the ones I did.

I also joined Toastmasters International so I could fine-tune my public speaking skills. Earlier this year I did well in the International Speech competition with a speech about my experience as an organ transplant recipient. It was a glimpse at the future, when I’ll be talking to large groups of people about my life and the memoir.

There were other writing projects along the way. A humor book about Northwest Arkansas, magazine articles, short stories, and an almost-completed novel to name a few.

Sometimes I lost sight of the project that started me on the path as a serious writer. I was like Murphy Brown’s house painter who never quite finished the job until the end of the series.

And now here we are. It’s out of my hands and in the formatting process. As any writer (or any creative person for that matter) can tell you, it takes a thick skin to put your work out there, to open yourself up to scrutiny, criticism, judgment. I already knew that from approaching shop owners about selling my humor book.

But this is different. This is my life on paper, along with a few photos of me during good health and bad.

This is me.

I’ve been told countless times I have a lot of courage. I guess so. I just did what I had to do to survive. But that’s nothing compared to the courage it takes to put all my experiences into a package, slap a current photo of myself on the cover, and say, “Here it is. Buy it. Read it. Form your own opinions and judgments about my life.”

The day I submitted the manuscript, my hand hovered over the mouse, reluctant to click the “upload” button. I had given my first insulin shot and faced surgery with less angst than I had about letting go of the story.

Next month it will be out there. I’ll be out there. Submitted for your approval.

Jim's book, What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger, will be available on Amazon in print and Kindle.

One Voice Bundled With Other Lone Voices: Modernly Beautiful or Beautifully Modern?

2012-11-21T15:29:00.001-08:00

With a divisive election behind us and the holiday season in front of us, it’s important to take a breather and remind ourselves that, as humans, we really are all in this together. Everyone knows there are some scary, bad things lurking in cyberland. This is one of the good, uplifting things the Internet has to offer and I felt compelled to share it here.

Listening to Eric Whitacre describe the project on the radio, it sounded interesting. He is a composer and conducter who wrote the music and offered it to people to perform at home, so they could send him their videos. There were 185 voices from 23 countries.

Photo source: good-report.com

Scott Haines synched all the individual voices and videos into one masterfully produced performance with Eric “conducting” the videos assembled as if on a stage of live performers. When they played the audio, it surpassed all my expectations.

All of these people from all over the world, singing the piece alone at their homes, voluntarily joined others doinig the same thing. In this age of social media so often replacing face-to-face social interaction, it’s easy to feel disconnected and isolated. There’s something about this project that helps transcend that.

Not surprisingly, it’s gotten traction. Virtual Choir 2.0 had 2,051 contributors from 58 countries.

If you find yourself alone this holiday season, watch this video and remember these people were alone and found a way to make their voices count. It will be interesting to see how this type of performing grows in the years to come.

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo

You can watch the interview with Scott Haines about the project.

My Adventures In Health Insurance

2012-10-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

I’m uniquely qualified to talk about healthcare. In the past 25 years I’ve been disabled and non-disabled, diabetic and ex-diabetic, insured through employers, Medicare, and no one. In the past couple of years the subject of socialized healthcare has been a divisive issue here in the U.S. Aside from brief discussions with a few people I’ve kept quiet.

But the time has come for me to jump into the fray. Lucky for me, I’ve got insurance if the fray hurts me.

My Type 1 Diabetes was a pre-existing condition (from age 12) which meant my employers’ insurance chose to ignore that area of my health needs. I paid for the testing supplies, disposable syringes, alcohol swabs, and two kinds of insulin myself—when I could. There were a few times when I had to use the syringes twice, risking infection.

And that was when I had insurance. There were times when I had to cough up (pun intended) the cash to pay for every doctor’s appointment.

When I was 27, the diabetic complications started. My vision and my kidneys started failing. I had no problem proving I was in bad enough shape to get Social Security Disability. Not long after that, Medicare became my only health insurance.

This is the part most lifelong healthy people miss. If someone with a chronic health condition can’t get the help they need to take care of it, they can become disabled. I went from paying into the system to being a consumer. Maybe it was inevitable, but it could have happened later and I could have paid more to Social Security before needing it.

To keep from losing SSDI and the Medicare that comes with it, I worked part-time at a number jobs for which was severely overqualified and under challenged. A diabetic with failing kidneys can’t expect a private insurer to go near them. A VOUCHER WOULD NOT HAVE MADE ANY DIFFERENCE. A voucher does no good if no one will take it.

Medicare paid for the kidney/pancreas transplant. I was lucky enough to have people willing to help raise the money for the unpaid part of the surgery. Not everyone is so fortunate. I don’t even want to think about how a private insurer might have tried to dodge the whole issue.

Medicare also paid for a second transplant, four major eye surgeries, laser treatments, dialysis, and a host of other less serious procedures.

In 2004 I landed a state job and employee health insurance started paying for the deductibles and copayments. Now that I’m a retired state employee, I’m covered by Medicare and private insurance. I’m one of the tiny percentage of disabled people fully covered by insurance.

I can remember when my situation wasn’t so comfortable, which is why I don’t have that “I’ve got mine, Jack” attitude I hear too often from the chronically healthy.

Even if you don’t have a chronic health condition, an accident or sudden illness could make it impossible for you to work. Then where would you be? You’d end up with socialized healthcare. You would be persona non grata to the private insurers.

You say you’re really careful? You eat right and exercise? Great, but your luck could run out. Yes, luck is a factor, too. A drunk or distracted driver could crash right into you. Don’t let luck make you smug.

There’s an old saying, apparently forgotten my many: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Keeping people healthy is so much cheaper than playing catch-up later.

Not only do most healthy people work, they further their education, volunteer, and some even start businesses.

I’ve heard people say, “We can’t afford to cover everyone in this economy.” With two-thirds of us overweight, we can’t afford not to. Here is the Land of the Free it’s “eat now, pay later.”

Well, I’ve seen the bill myself. Millions of us won’t be able to stiff the restaurant and do a Dine-N-Dash this time.

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Web site JimFairbanks.net

An Open Letter to Computer Virus Creators

2012-10-09T16:46:00.001-07:00

Dear Computer Virus Creator

I’m one of your countless, nameless, faceless victims. To PC users a computer virus is about as unavoidable as death, taxes, and spam. Even the most tech and internet savvy computer users (which I’m not) can fall prey your to dastardly deeds. I was fooled by a very realistic-looking link when I tried to upgrade software. Right away I knew I’d done something wrong because my computer froze up. A manual reboot led to obvious conclusion: virus.

Right now, you’re probably chuckling to yourself like some kind of villain from a Batman movie. I imagine you look like the garden-variety American computer geek, but you may actually be from anywhere in the world. In that case, you may not have much sympathy for a white, college-educated American male. Whoever you are, you’re about to get to know who I am.

The first sign something was wrong after I rebooted my computer was when Zoomtext, the magnifier program I use, didn’t open. Visually-impaired people like me have to use a program to enlarge what’s on the screen. I also use it to reduce glare by reversing colors on documents, so I’m looking at white letters on a black background. Black and white. Right and wrong. Some of us know the difference.

It may not matter to you that one of your victims is legally blind, so it may not matter to you that I don’t drive, either. I’m fortunate enough to live in a town with taxi cab service. It isn’t cheap, but I’m lucky to have it. I’m also lucky my computer guru wasn’t busy. He even gave me a discount to clean up your mess because I’m a regular customer. Yes, Mean-spirited Technically-gifted Loser, you’ve plagued me before.

After riding the taxi back home, I kept busy doing other things and tried not to think about lost productivity. I’m nearing completion of my memoir, in which I talk about several health issues I’ve had to overcome in my life. Being a single, middle-aged legally blind guy with a couple of transplanted organs isn’t easy. I really don’t need you complicating my life further.

A kind soul gave me a ride to pick up my computer when it was fixed and also hooked it back up for me. That saved me from having to feel the back of the PC tower to make sure I inserted the connections properly. It would have taken me five times as long as it took him and I probably would have ended up with a headache.

Score one for Jim!

Ah, but you did a thorough job, Mr. Egotistical Socially Unskilled 40 Year-old Virgin. The virus you made was in there so deep I had to take it back for a full strip-down of my hard drive. My computer guru removed everything this time, including your masterpiece of computer treachery. When I picked it up the next day, I had to reinstall software. Luckily, someone was able to hook up my computer this time and load Zoomtext on there again.

Score TWO MORE for Jim!

The rest of us can only wonder what motivates you to wreak havoc on our lives like you do. Are you angry at the world because in high school the cool kids shunned you due to your colossal geekiness? Is your ego so inflated and your imagination so limited that this is the only thing you can think of to leave your mark on the world? Do you work for an anti-virus software company desperately trying to create demand for its products? Does creating computer viruses somehow make your penis larger?

I’d like to think this will make you feel guilty, but it won’t. I’d love for the rest of us to sniff you out like bloodhounds, surround your sparsely-furnished little apartment, drag you out in the street in the underwear and dirty T-shirt you wear all day while sitting at your computer, and take turns pummeling you with our permanently infected laptops until you beg for mercy, cry like a little girl, and slink away to the safety of the nearest ditch or trash dumpster, but we won’t.

So, Sleazy Misguided Self-delusional Creep, I would like to close by letting your know that you were successful at causing me stress, raising my blood pressure, delaying my progress, and costing me a small wad of cash. But I don’t need to use my skills and education to unleash misery on the computer-using public in order to feel better about myself. And that, in spite of my limited eyesight and tech know-how, means I win. Until you serve up some kind of Y2K type of worldwide computer mayhem that leads rational people to hoard canned food, beef jerky, and ammo, you not only earn my disgust, by my pity as well—because you are as insignificant as a nanoparticle in the computer chip of an ameba’s tiny flash drive.

Finding Out Someone Would Save My Life

2012-09-05T14:14:00.001-07:00

Because yesterday was the ninth anniversary of my second kidney transplant, I thought I would share an excerpt from my book, which is in the final editing process. Maybe it's fitting that it will probably be published in September. It's a month of intense highs and lows for me.

Blindsided

Why is the word always associated with an unwelcome surprise? The term comes from something approaching from outside your field of vision, your “blind” side, catching you off guard.

It’s a situation I am only too familiar with. With non-existent peripheral vision, people and objects always seem to come out of nowhere. I get blindsided almost every day. It can cause everything from mild surprise to injury.

But, it’s possible to be blindsided by something good. Out of nowhere, exactly what you need. Sometimes, it’s far beyond what you hoped for. You find yourself saying, “I never would have expected that in a million years.”

Chance? Maybe. Luck? Probably. God? Yes.

There’s no other explanation for an unexpected gift so completely unselfish that it leaves you shaking your head in awe. A gift of such profound generosity that Hallmark doesn’t make a greeting card to express the gratitude you feel. That’s divine intervention. That is all the proof anyone needs for the existence of a mysterious, but loving God.

I guess you could say God made me legally blind—and has blindsided me over and over since then.

Connie

My parents and I sat in the waiting area of transplant office at OU Med Center. I was there for a checkup with Dr. Squires. We had been there long enough for them to finish reading the Ft. Smith and Greenwood newspapers they had brought to keep them entertained during the wait. Mom was reminding me of things to ask Dr. Squires.

She added, “And be sure to tell him that Connie wants to donate a kidney,so find out how that works.”

What??

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Who is Connie?”

Did I hear her right? Someone wants to give me a kidney?

“Didn’t I tell you Connie Grote wants to give you a kidney?” she asked.

“No!”

“Oh, I thought I had told you about that,” she said, a little embarrassed at the oversight.

“Someone wants to give me a kidney?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, Connie Grote, who cuts my hair, offered to give you one.”

At that moment, the nurse called my name and I went to have my vital signs checked, which was the first part of a typical appointment at the transplant office. My throat had suddenly gone dry and I could barely speak to the nurse. This unexpected announcement had triggered a dozen emotions all at once.

Someone wants to give me a kidney! I can’t believe this. I don’t even know her. Mom said her name is Connie something.

I couldn’t even remember her last name. I wanted to dart back to the waiting area and ask my mother for more details. She had just casually dropped this information in my lap and now I had to have my checkup. While waiting in the examining room, I pressed my thumb and forefinger in the corners of my eyes to stop the tear ducts. Shock, gratitude, curiosity, desperation, hope, skepticism, worry, relief, exhilaration—those and a dozen other emotions elbowed each other out of the way in a rush to the front of my brain, which had suddenly grown crowded with thoughts and unfamiliar emotions I didn’t have a name for.

“I just found out someone wants to give me a kidney,” I told Barbara, the transplant coordinator as she began to go over my medications on my chart.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. I can’t remember what else she said, or what all Dr. Squires told me when I shared the news with him. He explained all the steps necessary for her to be tested to make sure she was a suitable donor for me.

After my checkup, my parents and I went to eat lunch in Bricktown, an area of Oklahoma City with several restaurants. It was our custom, but this time was different. Over lunch, I told my parents what Dr. Squires had said about the subject of a live donor and got as many details as I could from my mother.

Mom said she had talked to Connie about my situation the last few times she had gone for a haircut.

“One day, she tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘I’ll give your son a kidney.’ Well, I was flabbergasted.” Mom said. So, the news had come right out of the blue to her just as it had for me.

She went on, “I asked her ‘Connie, what if someone in your own family needs a kidney someday?’ She said ‘God will take care of them.’ So I said ‘Well, OK then.’ Can you believe that?”

There's more to that chapter, but you have the main part. It's actually the first part I wrote when I started the book. It just seemed like the right place to start. What do you think?

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Author site http://www.jimfairbanks.net/