Almost Speechless

I had a very long weekend.   We started out driving to Ft. Smith to attend my nieces wedding.  It was beautiful and we had a good time seeing family that we rarely get the chance to see.  I got to see my great-nephews which I have never met because they live in Minnesota.  Soon after the wedding we traveled back home in hopes of getting to watch Ben's (my youngest son) all-star team play in a tournament in Dumas.  They were playing very well and kept on winning.  About the time we got home we found out that they won again and I had an hour and a half to drive the hour and 15 minutes to Dumas to catch his next game, which I did.   He ended up winning all of those games and also the championship game which didn't start until after midnight on Father's day.  They won and that was a good Father's day present.   Sunday was catching a little bit of sleep after arriving home at 3:30 am.  We had to get up and going by 10:00 in order to get Jake (my middle son) to a baseball tournament, thankfully only about 10 miles from home.  They played very well in their game and Jake hit the game winning 2-run home run, for my second Father's day present of the day.   They didn't play as well in the second game that afternoon, that's baseball.  It was a good Father's day.

I can talk all day long about how proud I am of my boys, that's not why I'm almost speechless.

I was sitting at my desk this morning trying to catch up from being away from the office on Friday and my phone rings.  It is Diane from the transplant team.   She is returning my call from last week asking how my results to all my tests turned out.   She went through most of my tests being fairly normal.   I had a few very small cysts on my liver which she said was not abnormal and we will probably be looking into that further in the future.  She also said that my PSA was high, I don't know what that means but she mentioned that it was related to my prostate and they might want to investigate that more as well.   I found out that my blood type was A+ (I read that as A plus), which I seem to remember is one of the more common types which expands my universe of potential donors.  My echo-cardiogram was normal, so I'm glad my heart is healthy.

I'm still not to the speechless part...

She ended by saying that she would take all my results to the transplant committee this afternoon, but that she didn't think that they would be putting me on the transplant list any time soon.  That's when I lost my speech.   She said that my blood work indicated that my kidney clearance (which is how they measure how well my kidneys are functioning) went from 20% function to 27%.  Think of it as flow through a water hose, if you are only getting 20% of your water out through the hose because it is kinked, it's much better to get 27% of the water out when you release the kink, increase is very good. They only put people on 'the list' when they have 20% or less kidney function.   I asked her how that could happen and she said they couldn't predict it, but that she has seen it happen only a few times.   I give complete credit to God and to all of you for your healing prayers, thank you.

That's the best Father's day present that I've received in a long time.

We will keep measuring to see how my clearance changes over time.  Please continue to pray.

... stay tuned