This year, more than ever, I'm glad I'm alive to celebrate another birthday. And I'm not on dialysis. My next doctor's appointment isnt until May 20, so I have a 2 month reprieve. We're hoping to take advantage of the reprieve by going to Hilton Head Island for a week in May.
Ramiro gave me the iPad 2 for my birthday! I have an iPad 1, which doesn't have a camera, so this is an upgrade for me. The iPad 3 has come out, but it isn't enough different from the iPad 2 to warrant the extra expense.
I found out yesterday that I've been put on the transplant list for Baylor (Dallas). I've called Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and requested an evaluation packet so I can start the process there. I had hoped to avail myself of the national kidney registry through Barnes as a way of getting my sister-in-law Janie to donate a kidney, but last night she had a TIA (trans ischemic attack), so that rules her out completely. She was the last person that was a possibility for me; everyone else had been ruled out for health reasons of their own.
My friend Debbie Phelan has been in the hospital over a week in Temple, TX, with pretty serious pneumonia. Today we found out her lung biopsy showed no signs of cancer, just serious infection. She will have thoracic surgery tomorrow to scrape out the lung infection. She has had a really serious illness, and it will be quite a while before she is fully recovered. If they can't get her up and walking soon she may have to go to rehab.
I'm reading a book called Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, by Lauren Winner. She converted from Judaism to Christianity, then experienced a crisis of faith after her mother died and she divorced her husband. I am finding that it really resonates with me, after I had a period of losing my faith when I first came to grips with my illness. I don't think the book has any answers as to how to find your way back, it simply looks at how she dealt with it, is dealing with it. I find that I am able to pray again, but my concept of what God cares about is very different now than it was before. Before my diagnoses, I believed in the concept that because God cared deeply about what happened to each individual in their earthly lives, you should pray to God for help with whatever troubled you. I don't feel that way anymore. I do believe that God wants us to be saved, and wants our spiritual souls reunited with him after we die. But I feel now, that whatever happens to us while on earth is not so much of a concern to God except as it relates to your spiritual life. So getting very sick is of no concern to Him, unless that sickness turns you away from Him. I don't believe that serious illness, or other earthly problems are God's way of testing our faith. After all, he knows whether we have it or not, and if we don't we don't and if we do, we do, so what's to test? And to what end? I guess what has fallen away for me is the idea of God as a loving father. A good earthly father would not test a child, would not withhold help that a child needs desperately, would not make a child deliberately sick just to see what that does to the child's love for the father. So why would we attribute those traits to God? It makes more sense to see trials and tribulations as mere by products of being human. I thank God every day for my continued good health, I thank him for every day of being alive. I am able to pray in praise and thanksgving, but not so much for petitioning for myself any more.
