The appointment that I am both dreading and looking forward to is coming up fast. The good Lord willing, I will be seeing the nephrologist on the 4th - just about a fortnight away...
I'm nervous because I am really worried about what the doc could have to say. But I'm kind of ready - ready to hear whatever, ready to know where I'm at, ready to know what I can do from this point on.
It's only been about 2 weeks of eating what I hope are all the right things. I'm so sick of tofu that I don't even want to drive past the soybean fields that surround my town. I can't remember ever loving a tall glass of water. I drink so much water these days that I think I dream of floating, drowning, or being waterboarded. I'm pretty sure that the Instacart delivery folks hate to see my order come up because they are going to be toting at least 2 cases of water for my deliveries. Bless them all, they really are the sweetest people. They might hate me but they never let on.
Oh, and this is fun: when my sarc is acting up and I can't remember anything for more than 5 minutes, I have trouble keeping track of just how much water I've consumed. I try to do a minimum of 4 of the 16.9-ounce bottles per day. I'll get to midday and I'm rooting through the recycling to see how many I have left to go. Now I've just started saving all the empties until I go to bed so I can track them. And it's a good thing I have a decent bladder or I'd spend half my day trotting to the toilet.
Can you tell I'm in a whining-ass mood today? I'm trying hard to be thankful for all the good in my life - and there is so much - but I do like to whine.
Tell you what, I have learned to cook just about any and everything in that dang Ninja. Give me a little time and I'll learn to make toast and scrambled eggs without getting near my stove. Popcorn, I can do in the Ninja. I've baked, roasted, air-fried, and steamed tofu (don't ask about the steaming results because that looked like a steaming pile of pale grossness!).
Black coffee has become my morning rescue. Either black or with a little rice milk in it to cut the bitterness. If you'd told me just 5 years ago that I would be buying so much rice milk, I'd have done an Eddie Murphy riff on you.
By the long-way-round, I am wondering if I'm not still partially in menopause. I notice that with all this tofu I'm eating, I feel a little less bitchy, snappy, and not-calm. In the past week, I have not once wanted to bitch slap that one annoying neighbor who tries to force me to be social every time he catches me at the mailbox. All my other neighbors know that I'm not social past vague greetings or - at the most - a minute-long exchange about this crazy Iowa weather. Why can't this one person read my vibes???
Anyway.
I'm a little scared and I no longer have my best friend to help me be a little less scared. I hate freaking out my family with my freakouts. I sometimes let my brothers' calls go to voicemail because I worry I will get choked up. That would invoke trouble. The sibling bat signal would light up and I'd have those guys flying in from all over to make sure I'm okay. And isn't that a beautiful thing to have to worry about? To be that loved? Yeah, so I need to cut this whining crap out. I am blessed, blessed, and blessed some more.
I was thinking about these health problems and losing-people problems and I remember what Zora said about the years that ask and the years that answer. I always want to add that there are years that give and years that take away. And I know that I have been shown so much of God's favor because no matter how much is taken, I always have an abundance left over.
I'll stop now before I get myself too worked up.
Peace
--Free
