Skip to main content
1:27, too much to drink and just seen my penultimate friend out the door...the final one is upstairs nailing my housemate. I should really go to bed and get five hours sleep before I have to get up for my last day at work, pre-Christmas break; the mess from our raucous festive party can wait until tomorrow at least.

But before I retire, just this to share: I collected my youngest brother from the airport today, and the relief that he was able to land on British soil before Christmas Day was the only present I require. As long as my father can arrive in a similar timely fashion my Yule will be perfect. The unconditional love I am endowed with by a selection of my friends and family has sustained me these last three years and it is only by having endured the hardship of kidney failure that I have understood the importance of it. Christmas is tricky because it is around this period that I began dialysis - for the second time in my life - three years ago. I am about to start my fourth year on dialysis, a notion that was incomprehensible all those months ago. Now, it is almost inconsequential.

Without dialysis I would cease to exist but without the love of those closest to me I would cease to live. The dialysis acts in lieu of my kidneys, but my heart needs no such assistance. Few of you will read this, but to those who do, please know how grateful I am for the time, energy, love and support you invest in me - please don't stop, I know I'm a drain. In my darkest moments, I have questioned my ability to continue forward on this path, but for as long as I must, for as long as you all need me to, I shall. This year, Christmas means sitting beside those that I love, without fanfare, and knowing that I shall give you everything I have. Never have I felt so grateful for my family and my friends. I am eager to accept this burden if somehow, cosmically, it negates the rest of you from coming to harm.

For now, a very Merry Christmas to all of you xx

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Postscript

You wouldn't believe where I am. You could guess, if you've seen the gratuitous images of my self-satisfied gurning face in front of an infinity pool on Facebook...otherwise you might find it hard to imagine the paradise in which I currently find myself. I am in Dubai. Bar Abby Clancey and the cast of TOWIE, is is not everyone's idea of paradise - it actually wasn't mine. It is exciting, exotic and fucking hot, but the skyscrapers and traffic, the desert and cultural  deficiency (not to mention the chavs that clutter up the Ritz Carlton these days, I mean honestly...) suggest you'd be hard-pushed to call it paradise. It is vaulted to utopian heights simply because, four-months after the transplant, I am here. My nearest and dearest suffered for seven years as I dreamily aired my wanderlust. Yet the reward of a post-transplant holiday seemed too extravagant a prize for which to yearn - wasn't a life free from dialysis enough? Wasn't having a drink when t...

The nights are closing in

The final step of my home dialysis journey (bleugh, journey...sounds like I'm on The X Factor) begins on the 22nd July when Nurse Carla will arrive with a sleeping bag and, presumably, some strong coffee, and sit on my sofa all night whilst I perform my first nocturnal session. It is the dialysis equivalent of hiring a wet nurse. During a regular daytime session, nothing should go wrong unless I have lined the machine carelessly with one eye on Only Connect and consequently forgotten to connect/un-clamp/tighten something pivotal. Dermot should behave, stay quiet and not do any of his ghastly alarm-yelping. At night, however, the chances of rolling over onto the tubes and occluding the blood flow, or the needles falling out and slowly bleeding to death, are much higher, what with all the concurrent sleeping I'll be doing; when this happens Dermot senses DANGER and screams at me. Undoubtedly, my first session with Carla will be seamless; I know from experience that it is only ...

Snow business like this kidney business

Snow: renal failure's arch nemesis. Though probably not in Norway, where they can actually handle snowfall. Today's Times reports on how the country is desperately dealing with the "situation" now that we have...ooh, a good two or three inches of snow on the ground; dialysis patients fall into the same category as those undergoing radiotherapy in terms of the need for treatment. Last year, I trekked across the icy wilderness of North London on foot with only my Uggs, my ipod and a Tracker for salvation (much like Shackleton, I would imagine) to get to the hospital. Only to find the Northern Line was running. I am fortunate in that I can just about miss one session. For the last two years I have been on dialysis, I have missed four sessions: once to meet a "friend" who was in town literally for that afternoon; once for my grandfather's funeral; once because I couldn't be bothered (and possibly because there was an episode of Gilmore Girls I wanted t...