Swings, roundabouts and Rollercoasters!

To my loyal followers, my apologies. I have not updated due to severe 'writers block', and certainly not through lack of any news! Indeed there have been many ups and downs making up the net progress since I last wrote. I just needed to get my head around some of the issues before I felt I could sit and update my blog. Now I have so much to write about that I'll need to just summarise it all from here...

Since January, we have done the underpinning on the house, redecorated the kids' rooms and gutted the old bathroom...so that's part of 2010 tasks ticked off already. The primary 2010 task of acquiring a new kidney is still work in progress and has technically required what feels like a backward step, to move forward. You will recall that the December transplant was called off by my State doctors and I took a break from medical issues in December, just to have a little holiday. The first medical issue I wanted to sort out in the new year was my hernia...which I had tolerated since November 2009 and was becoming quite sore and uncomfortable.

The first available opportunity to see a doctor/surgeon about my hernia was in late February. I went to see Dr IP Naicker, a specialist nephrologist at St Augustines, as my first act in moving my care away from the State. This was basically only the second time in ten years that I was getting renal medical care from the private sector, so it was quite a new and refreshing experience on the day. What was normally a whole day at Albert Luthuli, was only an hour or so with IP. He then sent me upstairs to see Dr ML Naidoo, a specialist surgeon. This chappy happens to be the renal transplant surgeon for KZN, regardless of State or private care, and although I was there for hernia troubles, we were able to discuss further transplant issues too.

The most interesting topic that arose during both these visits was the fact that both these specialists were talking as though Leanne would still be my donor! I had explained the whole story the State doctors had given me, but they still seemed confident enough to at least want to run their own tests. But, 1st things first...sort out my hernia.