Troubles McSteans

Monday morning when I got home from dialysis I signed up with Austin Public Health to get pre-approved for the current round of vaccines. Though our clinic is technically supposed to be receiving the shots "at any time," we've also been in that designation for almost a month.  I made it through the virtual paperwork and got in their system. The schedule showed no available appointments, which was not a surprise.  As I was setting aside my laptop to go upstairs for my post-dialysis nap, my phone dinged with a text.  We have appointments available, please check now! Oh boy! Maybe someone cancelled. I quickly hopped back online to secure my spot. There were an awful lot of spinning icons and then, "sorry our page is being bombarded please try again." Over and over I went through the process, mindlessly pressing buttons until EUREKA!  There was a spot at 11:00-11:30 that morning, 15 minutes from my house. I snatched it up. Furiously I ran upstairs to throw on real p...

Previously on The Diagnosis: Master List of Chapters Ryan and I both ended up taking a victory lap at college. He was working on adding a second major and I was still playing catch up from my lost transplant semester. This put both of us in single apartments so we were without roommates for the first time.  I had managed to mostly stay out of trouble for a long while. Though I still went in for regular check-ups, my "first" senior year saw no hospital stays, no biopsies, no signs of rejection. This good luck streak came to a screeching halt at the end of the first semester of my last year of school. My creatinine had once again been creeping up as Christmas break grew near. Also, I had gained an alarming amount of weight in a short amount of time. I can't remember the specifics of why my mother flew in to attend an appointment, but it must have been that we knew things were not going well and we needed all hands on deck to make some decisions. Dr. Riley had IDEAS. First o...

Links to all entries of The Diagnosis: 1.  The Diagnosis 2.  The Side Effects of Elective Surgery 3.  Transplant One 4.  College 5. Plasmapheresis and Calculus II 6. Austin 7. Dialysis One 8. Matters of the Heart 9. The New Normal 10. Transplant Two 11. The Dot-Com Bubble 12. Phoenix 13. What the Hell Is a Sed Rate? 14. Phoenix Pheresis Phunzone 15a. Migraines 15b. Some additional thoughts on Migraines 16. Dialysis Two 17. Transplant Three? 18. Matters of the Heart, the Second Part