A Kidney for Dr. Pickle

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas everyone. There is a lot going on in the background, but I have avoided sharing due to the holidays. Let’s all stay positive and look towards the new year. My living donor has been steadfast with seeing his donation through. As of now he will be going into the hospital of Jan. 5th evening, which is his birthday, and the surgery to accept his donated kidney will be on January 6th.

Words can’t describe how much of a hero he is to me. His kidney will go to someone in need in the Maine area, and he will receive a voucher for a kidney for his donation. That voucher will be given to me to turn into Mayo Clinic here in Arizona.

Mayo claims they will have a kidney as good or better than my donor’s in 7-10 days to be implanted for me. I’m still a little sceptical of that timeline, but i am just hoping to have a kidney by mid february at the latest. I have to curb my anticipation because I’ve been let down before.

After that, we begin a few months of regulating the kidney and the immunosuppressive drugs on a daily and weekly basis. I anticipate by May or June 2026 I will be living a bit more normal life. I am already making arrangements for where I’m going and who I will be celebrating with, and that includes my donor, and those who have supported me during this difficult time.

To quote Red from Shawshank Rredemption, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” I have an opportunity to make that living amazing, and i will be doing that in some exciting ways.

11/29/2025

It’s been a crazy week, and I really hate that most of my posts are negative, this one is mostly positive.

I spent 3 days in home dialysis training learning the proper procedures to maintaining and using my tunnel catheter. It really isn’t hard, but a lot of “clean” procedure to avoid infection, and the challenge of doing this while it is just below your collar bone. Try looking at that area on yourself. You will see what I mean.

I am now allowed to go back to home hemodialysis, and all my supplies arrived last night to change dressings, maintain clean procedure, flush the catheter with a heparin lock, etc.

I did score a few boxes of Tegaderm bandages from the clinic (thanks Ray😉) so I can continue to shower, but I still avoid water directly flowing over the catheter. The cotton bandaging would never fly for that application.

On Wednesday I did have a small hiccup, and that is why I had to return for Friday training. While on dialysis, my blood pressure collapsed, I passed out, fell out of my chair, whacked my head, and broke my eye glasses. I’m not sure if it was a physical passing out, or falling asleep, because I am increadibly exhausted with lack of sleep, low iron, low hemoglobin and RBC count, and a costovertebral joint issue from that hospital bed that has me sleeping in a chair right now.

EMTs were called, hospital admissions were discussed, but in the end I assured them I would be fine, and was able to drive myself home.

I really can’t wait for the next chapter to begin, because this current one has been getting boring after the last 3.5+ years. My living donor is donating his kidney on Jan. 6th, so according to Mayo Clinic, his voucher will come to me, and will be submitted. I should have my own Kidney in 7-10 days for transplant. I’m still a little cautious about that estimate, but I am hoping for a kidney by January 30th in my mind.

To say I’m Thankful this season is an understatement. My living donor is the most wonderful and selfless person I know, and I am beyond thankful for his gift of life to me. I have a lot of Plans on what I’m going to do, and where I’m going to go once this chapter is all over, and it will be vastly different than my past I feel. Not that my life was horrific, or bad, but the new prospective of time and what is important has certainly made me feel like I want to make some changes. Some of those changes my doctors are going to cringe at, but I refuse to remain bubble wrapped after all of this.

11/14/2025

I guess it’s time To update everyone on my dialysis saga. Remember back in March when I had that heart attack? How it bumped be off the transplant
List and I had to fight to get back on? Well, that’s is not the only thong it screwed up.

Usually I get a venogram to check my fistula twice a year. Well we skipped it while I was on platelet thinners, because they couldnt do anything surgically to impRove the flow. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. They sent me for a venogram, but instead of doing the ultrasound, then consulting with me, they just put me under, did the venogram, and decided to stick a stent in my shoulder without my consent.

This of course has not changed my venous flow, and has caused so much edema I can barely extend my arm, the biceps is bruised and swollen, and I can’t get any access for dialysis anymore. I’ve been in in center dialysis for the past week and even they are struggling to get access. I’m doing this all one handed, and they are much better with two hands and an assistant.

They want me to go back to the access center for them to try and fix this, which I have completely denied. I am now working to get a Mayo vascular surgeon to assess things.

So yeah. In center sucks compared to home hemo dialysis.

10/26/2025

If there is one thing I wish I could impart to everyone, Kidney Disease is not just some inconvenience like diabetes or Crohn’s Disease it is a potential death sentence if it doesn’t kill you, it will change who you are and what you are able to do for the rest of your life

Not nearly enough attention is given to this horrible disease. It’s up there with cancer, but people don’t give to kidney disease or have the empathy they do for cancer, and that is a real shame. The money people have given to cancer research has been significantly wasted. Decades of fundraisers with little to no progress to finding a cure, and yet Kidney disease is on the cusp of producing an artificial kidney, a pig kidney transplant, and they are stuck because they have almost no funding.

If there is one thing I beg of people, it’s to please donate to the American Kidney Fund. Help the high number of people who are literally waiting to die because there is no kidney for them.

Legendary New York Jets center Nick Mangold died from kidney disease, the team announced on Sunday. He was 41 years old.

10/08/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AR3ppiNe6/?mibextid=wwXIfr

10/06/2025

Finally! We are now back to where we were in March before the heart attack. And 7 months ahead of where they told me in August.

10/03/2025

They restored the post in 30 seconds.

10/03/2025

Apparently my last post, or one of my posts, because they won’t show me the one they removed, was “exploiting humans”.

This is why I hate FB.

09/24/2025

Prayers work, and I thank all of you for taking a few minutes to include me in yours.

In the beginning of August, I had a close friend who was testing to become a living donor. Everything was looking great, and he was in his final testing when they knocked him out of the running. I was devastated. Not only had I lost the only potential living donor I had, but I was also sidelined from getting onto the active transplant list as I anticipated , and was told to try again in April 2026.

I obviously didn’like that answer and forged ahead to get back on the list sooner. That effort is almost complete. I am just waiting on the Mayo transplant team to give final approval.

My only hope has been to get a deceased donor after getting back on the list. Being close to 4 years on the waitlist, I’m almost to the top of the list based on time.

But yesterday, I recieved a call from my former living donor, and what we thought was a hard stop, was given a second lease on life. We didn’t have all the formal details yesterday, so I really didn’t want to say anything until it was confirmed.

He is back in the running for donating his kidney to me. He passed the test he failed previously, so now it is a matter of scheduling the surgery for him to donate.

I still have some Moving parts to get in place on my end. I’m meeting with my nephrologist in about 2 hours to discuss those minor issues and get things aligned.

I’m in tears right now over all of this. Thank you all for your prayers, and most importantly thank you to my living donor. He is about to save my life!

09/23/2025

If you are into prayers, I could use all of them right now. Prays circles, prayer groups, individual prayers, chants, anything you’ve got. 🤞🍀

09/21/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1FKEC2wZTs/?mibextid=wwXIfr

09/16/2025

Well, it looks like my persistence is going to pay off. In my last update I explained I was getting stress echocardiograms and regular Echos to provide the Mayo transplant Team with all the information to to put me on the active transplant list, instead of the waitlist.

I finished those tests on Wednesday last week, and met with my regular cardiologist on Friday. Everything looked perfect, except there was a shadow on the apex of my Heart. He is certain this is a false positive from My diaphragm not being fully retracted during the image, as it wasn’t there in previous images.

Knowing Mayo can be risk adverse, he recommended we do a nuclear CT scan to prove it looks good.

Today I met with the cardiologist from Mayo who will make the decision to put me on the active list. Very nice Dr. that I had a long conversation with. He said don’t bother with the CT scan, because he is going to approve me as long as my ejection fractures, and volumes look good, and I can exercise about 4 Mets without symptoms, which I do with my swimming regularly. My heart will continue to decline as long as i am on dialysis, so it is a balancing act in his mind my heart is never going to look better than it does now, as long as i have renal failure he sees no immediate risk not to get me a kidney, so my heart can recover.

So the paperwork isn’t done until he looks at my test results from my Primary Cardiologist, but it looks
Like I’m back on the transplant list actively.

I still could use a living donor, but I am at least in the running for a deceased donor if nothing else. A deceased donor kidney lasts an average of 10 years, while a living donor kidney can last an average of 20 years or longer.

My life will never be the same as it was before, but it will be a much better quality of life. I will be able to travel again, go camping, and not be chained to a dialysis machine all the time.