So funny I forgot to laugh

The thing I forgot isn't actually something I forgot, but I did forget to mention it. It's important enough that I'll come back and write about it again.

Yesterday was six months since my transplant. Yay, I guess. According to the schedule, I'm three to four months behind on my recovery, which means that I haven't been in touch with any of my regular doctors in quite a while. I'm sure they're wondering what happened to me, though I'm equally sure they know.

I marked the date by going out to the hospital for bloodwork, as I do every week. I also got myself chastized for not having been to see an opthamologist, although I did report problems with my vision and nobody can figure out why I'm having them. (The finger shaking came from a doctor I encountered in an elevator. I didn't even know he knew my vision was giving me trouble.)

In any event, sometimes I feel all right and other times the kidney hurts. There were two other times today, once when I was in the shower and once when I was driving home from being with the animals. The pain has progressed from a dull ache to a sharp pain, and I don't know what it means.

I keep thinking that I'll be able to go back to work soon, but it seems that every time I think that, something happens. It's stupid because some people get through the exact same surgery with almost no impact. I was one of those people for a few weeks, frankly I would have gone back to work early if I hadn't had the problems in December and January through, well, now.

Things have changed, though. When I meet new people, I'm aware that they're going to see me in a different light than my old friends. New friends will never have known me as a sick person. People I know casually will never know that there was ever anything wrong with me. All anybody would see is that I take a lot of pills. Even that is easy enough to hide.

For the longest time, nobody except my closest friends knew that I was diabetic because I changed schools a year after I was diagnosed. I didn't make any particular effort to hide the condition, but I never made a big deal about it. The biggest deal was shortly after I went back to school after missing most of a semester. There was an English class project in which you had to make a speech giving instructions how to do something. One guy demonstrated how to make French Onion Dip with sour cream and soup mix; I demonstrated how to give an injection the same way I had learned, on an orange. I thought the process would be a major gross-out to my classmates, but they thought it was very cool.

Otherwise I was just another girl who drank diet soda. So now I'll be just another girl who takes a lot of pills and lands in a hospital every so often. Sounds like Hollywood, doesn't it?

before - after