Clinic visit--June 11

Today being Monday, we had a clinic visit. I saw Tim Keefe, transplant coordinator (he rotates clinic duty with Bettina Herrera-Go) and Michelle, the physician's assistant instead of the doctor. Tim asked me about scheduling the surgery to remove my PD catheter. He said he'd talk to Dr. Ruiz (whom we met at Baylor Dallas during the evaluation process) about doing it sometime this week, perhaps on Thursday. Tim is supposed to call me back with the schedule. All my numbers continue to look great. My hemoglobin count has gone UP to 12.2, so it's clearly in the normal range. My creatinine has gone back to 0.5. I told Michelle I was glad to hear it because it had crept up to 0.7 last week. She said it's possible you were not as hydrated then. So, that's an indicator to me to keep up my water drinking. Except for getting up frequently during the night, it's not hard to drink at least 64 oz of water and whatever else I drink with lunch and dinner. I figure some days I drink about 80 oz of water. Michelle said that after this week, I can drop down to ONCE A WEEK CLINIC VISITS!!!! Yay! This is a step closer to going home. So, next week I come to clinic only on Wednesday. After clinic we went to our nutrition class, which was on food safety. Some new things have to do with not eating cold meats unless they are reheated! That includes tuna and chicken salad and cold cuts! Yuck! So I guess the days of my making tuna salad for the week, and taking a sandwich to work and letting it sit on my desk all day are over! Tanya, the nutritioniest, suggested using the 3 oz packs of tuna, making a one serving portion, then eating it right away. I love tuna and chicken salad, so that will be a change we have to make. We asked about going to a salad bar and Tanya said you need to make sure they change the food often enough, and skip the cold meats--the chopped ham (which I don't use), pasta/tuna salad, etc. I had some tuna/pasta salad at Sweet Tomatoes over the weekend, but only about a tablespoon, since I try not to eat much pasta. This evening we went to Mary Margaret Stubblefield's house and picked her up, then we all went to Charleston's for dinner. We treated her as a thank you for letting Ramiro stay at her house for the first two days that I was in the hospital. She really went out of her way to help him--cooked for him, showed him an alternate route to the hospital, etc. She is a very nurturing person, and can't do enough for you. At times I find it cloying, but she means well. We wanted to take her somewhere she had never been--easy enough, since she doesn't go out much. Every time we've asked if she's been to this restaurant or other, she's said no, but she's heard that it's good/bad/whatever from her co-workers. Why she doesn't join her coworkers in this outing is beyond me, but she likes her restricted life, and some of it may be due to finances. She works as a PBX operator (who know there were still such jobs!) for Dillard's warehouse. She's been there for close to 30 years. Her job and her house are a few miles apart, and she said that she's the only one that never misses work even in bad weather, because she can always drive in. After dinner we brought her to the apartment so that she could see how nice it is, and about 8:30 we drove her back home. A big thunderstorm was beginning to roll in, and she was very concerned that we not be in it. Also, her street is all torn up because it is under construction, and she was afraid that we could get stuck in it. Of course I had to call her once we got back to the apartment so that she would know we made it back safe and sound. See what I mean about cloying?