1/4 plus 3/4...now you're caught up on my life

...I finally got to the hospital around 10pm. I checked in downstairs, took the elevator up to the 7th floor and then walked around the maze-like floors that led to Rob's room. I was so relieved to finally see Rob.

Here's how he ended up in the hospital: He was supposed to work that day from 1 to 10, but at 10:30am, he'd called his doctor with the same complaints as he had from calling on Friday morning, too. On Friday morning, he was throwing up and just not feeling like himself. Same thing Saturday morning. But this time, the doctor said he'd better come in, to check into the emergency room, just to be sure.

Most of you reading this will know that Rob has PKD, or Polycystic Kidney Disease. But if you didn't know that, it's a genetic disease that he inherited from his Dad's side of the genes that basically makes your kidneys stop working, and then you need dialysis and eventually a kidney transplant. Many of the Newton aunts, uncles and cousins have it. More PKD info.

Here are some images from his MRI scan done on January 26:



So in this picture, you can see how big Rob's kidneys are, and how many cysts he has. This is a transverse view from the bottom. The kidney on the left (his right kidney) is much bigger than the other. When I first saw this scan my first thought was that Rob looked like he had a fetal pig inside him! (hey, if you can't laugh at the rough stuff in life, it's just going to suck more) The other kidney is big, too, you just can't see it in this section cut. Imagine sliding up an inch or so toward his head. Here's an image of that:



What you're seeing here is the result of a burst cyst. That blob above the kidney on the left is fluid from the cyst. The fluid is just floating around in his peritoneal cavity (I think? I was so fascinated seeing these images that I missed a few things the doctor said!) The fluid eventually caused a condition called "ileus", which means that there was a temporary paralysis of his intestines. You can't eat anything when you have this, except ice chips, but then again, when you're in a lot of pain like Rob was, you don't want to eat, you just want to sleep all day because the pain meds are so numbing.

Rob's liver is also enlarged and has a couple of small cysts, too. I don't know why, but many PKD patients also have these effects on their livers? Maybe one of my doctor or nurse friends will know the answer. Here's a view of the largest section of his liver:



Now, here's a view of what a normal kidney, liver, spleen, intestines, should look like.



So you can see that Rob's kidneys are about 4-5 times larger than normal size ones. One doctor told Rob that his right kidney (the big one) is about as big as a football. Yeah, a football. They're supposed to be as big as your fist. Wow.

So to conclude, Rob stayed in the hospital from that Saturday morning until Thursday afternoon. Rob started dialysis while in the hospital, on Wed. Jan 30. He will remain on dialysis until he has a kidney transplant, which could be a few more years. We don't know what caused the burst cyst.

But life is very different now for Rob, and me, too. Rob gets up at 5:45am every Mon, Wed, and Fri, for dialysis, and he's not a morning person, so this is a big deal to him. He drives to the Davita clinic (about 8 miles away) and sits in a chair with a 15 gauge needle in his arm for about 3.5 hours. He usually has Monday and Wednesdays off from work, because dialysis is very tiring for most people. Luckily, Rob hasn't felt that extreme tiredness, and he uses those days off for projects around the house or working extra hours with Scott. The dialysis diet has been the biggest change for me. I am cooking more, and cooking healthier, less-processed foods. Rob is losing weight, and that's a good thing. We hope to be able to transition to the at-home-dialysis soon. That will definitely free up some time on Rob's schedule, and he won't have to be around all those annoying people at the Davita clinic!

Well that's all for now. I have a feeling I won't be writing much about swimming, cycling and other fun adventures. And I'm okay with that. More updates later. Be sure to check back soon!

Three-Quarter Catch-Up....no, not the drill

Wow, 6 weeks since my last blog post. Let me catch you up on things since Jan 1.

Jan 3: Started my new 40-hour a week job as a live-out nanny for a little girl who is 13/14 months old. (13 when I started, 14 now...huge difference, for those of you who may be reading this that are inexperienced with children and how they develop). Her name is Ella and she is a real doll, smart, not fussy, fun to play with and watch her learn. The mom, Teresa, works from home, in her office, door shut most of the day. The dad, Jason, works for the railroad as either a conductor or an engineer, I don't know exactly. I can use the mom's car to drive Ella around town to run errands or visit a playground, which is very nice. They live in Wake Forest and my 17.5 mile commute to work takes 22 minutes on a good day, 30 minutes if I get stuck behind a slow grading truck or school bus (grrr!) The pay is exactly what I need, and I can sometimes get overtime, which I can elect to either be paid for, or I can save it up and use it as vacation/sick time pay. Yay, I'm happy!

From Jan 3 through Jan 31: Worked anywhere from 60-70 hours a week because I was still "head coach" of DAMA. That's an easy 20 hours a week there (I mean, what I get paid for). Plus my 40 with Ella. And I worked overtime with Ella for about 2 of those weeks, since Teresa had a big work project to complete and she needed me anywhere from an extra half hour to an extra 4 hours. During this time, my house was a complete mess, but I made myself not care about it, knowing that once the month was all over, I'd be able to play catch up.

The extra money was nice. I was able to take a weekend trip with DAMA friends Kim and Jason to Asheville. They had a free pass for me to go to the Biltmore house, which I couldn't pass up, since I'd never been and I've wanted to since we moved to NC. Rob couldn't go with us, since he works pretty much every weekend from now until eternity. We left on Jan 19, around 9am. Started Biltmore tour around 2pm, after we had lunch at some nice cafe on the grounds near the winery, which was surprisingly not too expensive. Jason was my tour guide, as he's been to the house like 9 times before, since he grew up in Lenoir, which is less than an hour east of Asheville. It was amazing! You can't take pictures inside the house. But we got a good one of Kim and I goofing off around this lion statue right out front of the house:



After we finished touring, we found a cheap hotel room near the asheville mall. A couple hours later, we're eating dinner at the Chili's across the street, and we had quite possibly, the worst waiter (or was it Waitress?) on the face of the planet. Oh well, I still tipped "the minimum" (10%), since I have experience here as a server at restaurants in NC. They don't get minimum wage, they make something like $2.50 an hour. So that means, if you don't tip, you're treating them like they're less than a human being, that they're not worthy of at least making minimum wage. And I just can't do that to someone, no matter how bad the service is.

The next morning, we ate our free buffet breakfast, where I enjoyed a waffle, 2 sausages and a few sips of some really gross coffee. Then we drove up north a bit to the town of Mars Hill, where we went to the Wolf Ridge ski resort. I opted to snowboard, while Kim and Jason skied. Now mind you, the last time I went snowboarding was January 1 in the year of 2002. And that was the day I broke my ankle. That was at the Heavenly resort in Tahoe, with Rob. So I've been a bit leery of trying it again. I stuck to the 2 bunny slopes all day. I fell a lot, but nothing too bad. For the first half of the day, I could only snowboard on my toe-side because every time I tried to go heel-side, I'd fall right away. I was getting really pissed about that, but it eventually worked itself out and I could carve a semi-straight path down the bunny slope by switching toe-to-heel and heel-to-toe. I did have a ton of fun though, despite the falling down, and not having the nerve yet to go up on the big ski lift and try to "intermediate" run. Oh well, next time. I did catch a little bit of air off the tiny jump someone made at the bottom of the bunny slope - it was no higher than 9 inches maybe, but it sure was fun. Here I am halfway down the bunny slope:



Jan. 26: I went to the Charlotte Sunbelt Championship meet with a handful of DAMA swimmers - Derek, Marshall, Josh, Dave, Joe, Heidi and Karen. I didn't swim, since I had caught the worst cold after coming home from my Asheville weekend, and I was still on antibiotics. It was fun to go just as a coach instead of a coach/swimmer like I normally do. I left at the crack o'dawn with Heidi because she swam the distance events in the morning. All the others came later, when the afternoon events started. Here's a great pic of Heidi after she finished the 1650:



She swam her event so great. Neg split 5:53, 5:52, 5:51 - wow! Talk about a perfect swim! Then came the 1000, which she swam studly, too. I can't remember those splits. Then everyone else checked in, warmed up and swam great, too. I took some videos of everyone swimming, I'll have to put those up on YouTube later. Derek had a great swim in his 50 Free - he finally broke out of the 25's, so he was happy about that. Marshall's swims were good, all near his best times. And Josh, Joe and Dave all swam well.

Here's 2 more pics - the mens' relay and the mixed relay. Check out the buff-ness:





I was planning on having dinner with everyone and then heading home to Durham, but I finally got a hold of Rob, who had checked himself into the hospital around noon that day. When I first spoke to him, he said, don't worry, don't come home yet, I'm fine...etc. The second time I spoke to him, he said, yeah, I'm staying overnight - so I left as quickly as possible and safely sped as fast as I could to Duke. To be continued on the next blog post...