Kidney Clinic - The World We Live in Chris Hondros & Tim Hetherington

Tim Hetherington was a very important man who brought the truth about War to America w/ his photographs and his award-winning documentary about the endless fighting in Afghanistan Restrepo.

Tim Hetherington, from the UK, and other journalists, such as the great Chris Hondros of the US - whose classic image of a 5-yr-old bloodspattered girl in Iraq - were the victims of mortarfire in Libya.

Their deaths were announced on Facebook.

I sent a Facebook message to Sarah's friend Heather Pastor Moran, an exec at National Geographic which aired the film, sending her a NY Times article about his death.

Heather responded that her channel will re-air the documentary in his honor.

He was 40 years old.

My problems sound like a lollipop in comparison.

When I write, I like to nosh on peanuts. Be right back.



How about matzoh and peanut butter? Mom doesn't eat bread during the XX days of Passover so she kindly sent over this matzoh made by Yehuda in Israel. It's fresh and crunchy. Smucker's natural peanut butter with the oil on top is my favorite.

No, not the BP oil spill, whose disaster is a year-old now. Did you see the Frontline program on how their continued cost-cutting puts every one of their oil rigs in danger. A future spill awaits.

Whenever I have Kidney Clinic at Einstein Hospital I come home with worse sciatica. Why? B/c I sit for hours, waiting.

Thank God for opiates. They don't make me "high" and they dull the pain. I probly had one of the worst cases of my life today after Kidney Clinic.

Here's the good news.

My blood sugar, thanks to insulin, is occasionally normal, and keeps getting closer to normal as the days go by.

I had to stay super-long at the Clinic today b/c I just started having blood in my urine.

I was terrified!

What was going on?

Dr Metro in Urology explained it to me when he painlessly removed the stent from my ureter.

Your bladder doesn't like foreign objects attached to it so it got infected. Everything should be fine from now on.

It is. I have the most beautiful piss in the world.

Dr Zaki also wanted me to get an ultrasound of Odysseus, Sarah's kidney, which is now happily performing its duties 24/7.

Bill was my wonderful ultrasound technician.

He showed me the photos of my darling new kidney and said, I think you should go empty your bladder. It's all filled up and the excess is flowing into the kidney.

I never knew that, did you?

See, we learn something new about urine every day.

The nephrologist, Dr Raja, was very kind and spent a lotta time w/ me answering my questions.

It is possible, he said, that in the future we can consider my GOING OFF prednisone. That's the antirejection med that caused my diabetes.

Hurray hurray!

I gave him my Yes I Can, Conquering Bipolar Disorder, and asked him to give it to his colleague Dr Pande, a nephrology fellow.

Then I saw tall and handsome Dr Pande down the hall and raced over to catch him so he could have my "book."

He was thrilled. And said he'd email me his comments.

When I checked out of Kidney Clinic, Alice was the only one in the waiting room.

She's gotta be hospitalized b/c of high blood pressure. Darn.

"I'll see you on Monday," she said optimistically.

I love Alice. A really nice person who knows everybody in the waiting room. She's a former social worker.

Told her I'd just read a poem about Rosa Parks. "She was just tired," I said.

The Charles Coe poem.

Alice, who's black, knew the story.

I asked what her style was for taking her pills. She takes them with meals, taking a few here, a few there.

My friend Denis takes em the macho way: ALL AT ONCE.

My colleague Judy Diaz gave me some hints on how to take mine. Drink water first to moisten your throat. When you take the pills let them get wet in your throat before you swallow, they'll go down easier.

Thank you Judy!

Isn't it amazing how people help one another?

While waiting in the exam room I made some new friends. In the room across from me was a transplant recipient from March - Debbie - who came with her daughter and g'dtr Isabella.

Debbie had received the kidney of a 29-yo man.

I told her I thot I was also offered that kidney, but a review of my blogpost - and poem Nameless Boy - shows my guy was 27 and I was third in line.

I was first, however, for another drug-overdoser, but my own transplant operation was scheduled the following week.

Fate or divine design?

Dr Zaki paid me a visit b/c of my wine-colored urine.

He's the chief transplant surgeon at the hospital - pancreas, liver and kidney.

Lithium toxicity is a COMMON CAUSE for kidney t'plants. I thot it was rare but it's not.

The entire operation was done watching the computer monitor. A camera is inserted near the kidney and the image appears onscreen.

They don't look down, but they watch the monitor the whole time.

I asked Zaki to show me the movements his hands make when he puts in a kidney.

Millions of movements, he said.

I would've liked to have seen them but .....



Finally finally I got home from Kidney Clinic.

I'd left for the arspital at 7:30 am and arrived home at 4 pm. Ada drove me there and the Fabulous Fontaine drove me home.

The reason why I keep itching my nose is b/c of the Percocet.

What I'm gonna do next is shoot up my long-acting insulin for the nite and then watch videos here in bed on my laptop.

- PBS

- Ted Talks - watch Susan Lim, MD, of Singapore, who did the first liver transplant in Asia

- Charlie Rose