WebKittyn Warbles

A very happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. May it be a relaxing day of BBQ, love and family and since your kids probably won't say it for a few more years, thanks for being a dad. There's so much emphasis (and rightly so) on motherhood, let us not forget how important it is to be a dad, to have a dad. I don't care what anyone says, kids need a dad.

This year I've gained membership to a club I never wanted to be a part of; a club for those who go through greeting card holidays without having the holiday's focus in our lives. It sucks, it's a pretty sucky club but here I am on my first Father's Day without my dad here. How am I doing? Honestly? Crappy. I knew I'd be in bad shape but right now it's really bad shape. I can admit it, right now I'm just sad and nothing anyone says or does is going to change that. I'm rational enough to know it's brought on by a stupid greeting card holiday but the loss is still real and if I get one more fucken ad from the online greeting companies to "send Dad and ecard" I'm going to kill someone.

And a happy birthday to my mother who instead of celebrating turning 70 went to bed holding a stuffed pig and cried so loud I had to turn on the AC so I didn't hear it.

As for me, I've run out of tears for the moment and I'm actually taking some solace in looking at some old pictures of my dad when he looked like a thug in the 50's and when he dragged his whining daughter across country in the ugly green station wagon.

This sucks, is it Wednesday yet?

In lieu of the ecard this year...

Dear Dad,

Well Chuck, aint this the shit. You were supposed to be here, apparently you promised her you would get up and go out for brunch to celebrate the two days together. You were supposed to be here for me as I missed last year with you and was looking forward to this year. But you're not here, you stopped fighting the fight and you're not here.

I'm not angry anymore, I don't blame you to be honest. Some readers might find this morbid but tough shit if they do. She and I talked about the night you died, it was the first time since you came home you truly had a smile on your face. If I was a person of faith maybe I'd be thinking it's because you went with God or to Heaven but ya know what? I think you were just finally out of pain and tired of fighting and okay with letting go. All the signs were there that last week and going back into the hospital would have been both the obvious next step and the one thing in the world you did not want.

I'm not angry but I'm really really sad. I didn't realise how much the little things we shared mattered. I don't have that bond with her. She doesn't care about my websites or videos by crazy gay Dutch guys. She doesn't follow who is who in my life and keep up with the latest bands and movies. She doesn't get that tingle in her head when a new Cross or Bosch novel is announced.

She's doing as well as she can though, she tries to hide how much pain she's in but she's never been good at hiding things.

I've been looking at old pictures and reading the letters you sent to me when I was in Albany Med and you were in the Center. How sick you were but you still worried about me. I can't help but wonder how much worrying about me didn't help you.

I wish you were here to go through the lawsuit with me. There were so many things I wanted to be able to buy for you that you deserved. You were the best dad a girl could ever have wanted and I'm sorry I wasn't able to give you more when you needed it. Lunch and company wasn't much to offer but I loved every minute of both and I would give my last bit of kidney function to have you ask me to re-heat the soup one more time.

The ecard companies are making me nuts, how many hundreds of those things did I send you over the years..

I know you'd be pissed at a lot of things around here, I know you would tell me to be nicer to her and appreciate her more. I'm trying, I promise you I'm trying but I'm struggling.

I really miss you. There are days where I only cry once the whole day and there are days I hardly stop. It's hard to believe it's been five months. I keep waiting for this miraculous 'it gets easier with time' I keep hearing but maybe I'm just pushing too hard for it to come too soon. You really were my best friend and so much more than a dad. We made that transition from father/daughter to father/daughter/friend and you left one hell of a gap in my life there, Chuckie.

I don't want to watch bad zombie movies with anyone else. That was our thing. I haven't watched a bad zombie movie since.

I just want you to know how much I miss you and that I love you and that you're supposed to be here.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Thank you for being the best and for giving me a lifetime of love. I really really miss you.

With love,

Your 'fucking pothead' daughter

This is a really tough week for me.

I don't need to go into how tough this first Father's Day is. Last year I was too sick to go see my dad but he was doing better so I bought him and my mother lunch from Red Lobster and they ate at the Center. And I thought that was depressing.

This year it's double whammy year, doesn't it just figure that when you need it the least it hits?

My mother's birthday is June 21st and every seven years her birthday happens to fall on Father's Day. Yah, that would be this year. Joy. She'll be 70.

My dad didn't leave the house much towards the end, it was that hard for him to breathe. However, my mother had made him promise that on Father's Day / her birthday they would go out to brunch.

Needless to say, it's pretty bad around here. I'm doing the best I can to keep my own head above water and trying to keep her as okay as possible but I'm fighting a losing battle.

Tonight's she's got a friend's graduation to go to and a big party for this person on Saturday so it's something. I have no idea how the rest of it's going to go.

She took the 23rd off from work as well, it's five months to the day since he died and too close to her birthday for her to be at work.

I want the week to be over. I want to blink my eyes and be done with all of the week and have it be the 24th. I want to be past that first Father's Day and I think I can mentally prepare myself in seven years for the next double whammy.

Golf is on, the Open is on. I would have been spending as much time as possible watching every second of it with my dad and it's both comforting and really sad at the same time. I miss him so much still. It's been five months and it hasn't lessened at all.

I'm not drowning in sad though, as much as it may sound like it. I take comfort in quite a few things and am appreciative of all the little things that manage to pull my thoughts away for a few minutes and maybe even make me smile.

I just want this first Father's Day over.

Let's go, Tiger. Win this one for Chuckie.

If it's possible to be both really excited and really bummed about something at the same time then that's where I am. It's like a living bi-polar moment without the bi-polar stuff. Hooey.

My lawyer called me today. Not his assistant, not is paralegal - him. It was a whole different tone on the phone than the last time I spoke with him. He was extremely encouraging without building too much hope but he was definitely encouraging.

He said he's ready to move on my case. My case. It wasn't my case before. He said his team of experts had reviewed what I sent to him (a small portion of the records) and they were ready to move on my case. He said he had 'spent all morning on your case.'

Last week when his assistant called me and asked me for some further papers, she apologised for his not getting back to me yet and told me he was in court and had 38 cases in review. That he went out of his way to jump me to the top and tell me he spent all morning on my case was the most encouraging feeling I've had.

Then the axe fell.

This guy is not an ambulance chaser. He's a real deal private attorney and the only reason he took me in the first place to review was as a favour to a friend. He doesn't have doctors on staff who can be called as expert witnesses but are also easy to dispute. He has an independent team of doctors (a kidney specialist, a lung specialist and one or two others) who he works with. They are not on his payroll.

This group is the group who reviewed what was sent which is about 1/4 of all the paperwork. I know that the three days in the ICU at Northern Dutchess alone had 136 pages of records and I've got eight weeks in AMC and three weeks in KH?

The problem?

It's going to cost $2000 for the fee to hire the expert witnesses. I don't even know if hire is the right word. First they subpoena all my records. Then I imagine they have someone who works for them go through the records page by page and highlight the important stuff. We're talking thousands of pages of records here. Then this group makes the final call as to whether there was medical malpractice and assesses the level of severity of the malpractice and the aftermath.

He told me straight out that he is fully aware of my financial situation, being on disability with a small check and hardly anything left over. He told me he would not encourage me to move forward on it unless he really thought there was a case, unless his group had done the preliminary report and with what they had were willing to say yes, there is something here.

Normally it would have cost in the $3000 area for such an extensive review requiring so many 'experts' but he was able to get it down to the $2000. I can understand the cost, when you start dealing with specialists it's always going to involve money for time. It's also a whole lot of records to read and a strange and tricky case to follow (everyone who gets into it calls it 'fascinating.' I'm 'fascinating.').

It was the best news I've gotten in a while. I was worried he was going to say there was nothing there but that was just me. Darkstar and everyone who lived through it with me seemed sure there was something there but I needed that confirmation from the lawyer to make it real. It helps a little bit with the long-term acceptance and coping. These people hurt me and it's not just me saying it now, it's people who are trained in these things.

But shit on a stick, 2 grand might as well be 2 million when you have nothing. I have no idea where I'm supposed to come up with 2 grand but I'm sure as hell going to try. I'd go sell a kidney but that wouldn't get me very far.

I will make this happen somehow.

In the meantime, it just feels really good inside to have that validation. I can knock a small piece of the chip off my shoulder now. Save the rest for when this is over.

2 grand. Shit.

This one was also easy. Every single man and woman who has ever had the guts to serve their country is my hero.

Today is not just another day.

Never forget, we can't be allowed to forget.

Well this didn't take a whole lot of thought.

Even if he hadn't died in January my dad would still be my hero but this is just one more thing I can do in honour of him. He's been my hero for as long as I can remember and it wasn't just because I was a daddy's girl my whole life.

My dad had it rough. His own father died in WWII when he was very small and his mother was a Finnish speaking immigrant who decided, after months of physical abuse, that she no longer wanted to care for a son as a widow. She dumped her Finnish speaking son on her dead husband's sisters and mother and never looked back ever. That was the last contact he had with his mother and while he was young, he was old enough to know his mother abandoned him (he was around 10).

He grew up poor but loved in an Irish-Catholic family that nurtured the hell out of him. He was given a love of education and family and while they may not have had much, they had love and they had each other. He grew, he went to school, he worked, he became a solid young man.

He served his country as a member of the US Air Force, those were some of the best times he ever had. He was stationed in Alaska for a while and he had so many awesome stories of life in Alaska, life in the Air Force in the 50's and the many times they would get in trouble. When he came out he went to college, got his degree and moved on to graduate work.

While in school he met, courted and married my mother. Theirs was a whirlwind romance culminating in my drunken father chasing my mother's car with his Good Humour truck all through Mt. Vernon until she gave him a shot. She was a spoiled Jewish rich girl who was totally out of his league but he won her over and they were married on New Year's Eve.

His passion had always been reading, he was a man who would read any and every book he got his hands on. Somewhere along the way he made a decision to buck the system and follow his dream. He walked away from teaching and entered the world of rare book dealing. He would spend every free minute trolling library sales, estate sales, tag sales and eventually he built up a stock large enough to open a store.

I came along during all of this and I could not have asked for a better father. He taught me the wonder of reading at an early age and would pack us all into the car during the Summer to drive across the country so I could experience everything the US had to offer. He sent me to private school and Summer camp from his book business and maintained a home with a pool and all the amenities.

He loved my mother in a way you don't see very often anymore. They were together 47 years and were as in love at the end as they were on day one. He was my mother's first and only lover and if there is such a thing as a 'soul mate,' he was hers.

He had a warped and perverse sense of humour which he also passed along to me. When I was 5 and curious about the basement (where I didn't belong), he told me not to go down there because the washing machine was actually a monster that ate children. He loved to scare me and I loved it when he did it. He never let things get boring, on the weekends there were always trips to the zoo, aquarium, botanical gardens, museums, fairs, anything and everything.

He pushed me, he challenged me, he made me work hard at everything I did.

When I was 14, my dad officially became my hero in a true superhero sense. I had been molested earlier that Summer by a freak of nature employed by the camp I went to. I wasn't raped but stuff went on and a 34 year old man isn't supposed to restrain a 14 year old until she jerks him off. There was a camp reunion I insisted on going to and the pervert actually had the nerve to show up. My father flew into a rage like I had never seen before and went after this guy like a raging bull. I think he would have killed him if security for the place hadn't broken it up. My eyes shined for my daddy in a whole new light that night. That night he was my daddy, Superman, Batman and all the others wrapped into one rare book dealer.

As we both aged, he remained my best friend and the one person I could tell everything to. He didn't always understand what I was going on about but he listened and he laughed and he was always there for me. When I moved out I would call him every day for at least an hour and we would just talk or watch golf together over the phone.

I lost my dad in January after a year-long bout with multiple issues that almost killed him a few times. He went peacefully in his sleep, here at the house with a smile on his face. I'm still not doing very well but I try.

There are no heroes for me any more heroic than my dad so I wanted to start June's NaBloPoMo off with the right note. Every little girl should have a dad who is her best friend, her dad and her hero. I was definitely one of the lucky ones.

I love you, Dad.

*blows the dust off this place*

I've got so much updating to do, I'm not going to cram it into one ginormous post. This one is for the ongoing kidney issues.

Last full blood test I took was in November. They did some in Feb. but not all of the tests. I know, I know. Not smart at all when you have end stage renal disease. I put it off because I didn't want bad news before Christmas. Then my dad died and I couldn't handle bad news if it was bad news so it got put off even more. It was always there in the back of my head but it's easier not to deal with things than stand up and say let's go. The possibility of hearing 'it's time, Heather. You're going on the transplant list' scares the shit out of me. So I put it off.

The puking has gotten considerably worse. It's not every day but it can be up to 12 times in one day on a prime day and unless I've turned bulimic and no one reminded me, that much barfing is just not kosher.

So I broke down and went to the first doctor, my general practitioner doctor. He did a bunch of blood tests and got on me for not exercising more and suggested I might have 'anger issues' as a result of everything I've gone through the past year.

I've been waiting all week for the results, leave it to me to go get blood done on a holiday week so it's not a 2 day turnaround. I finally broke down today and called after a particularly unpleasant puke session.

My diet of beef and 44 ounce slushes seems to be working. I'll be damned, it's working.

A year ago I was in the early stages of dialysis. September when they thought I was okay enough to take me off my creatinine was a 4.7 and my BUN a 46. Potassium was 5.5 and phosphorus 5.2. Higher than they should have been but good enough to get off dialysis.

Normal levels should be between 3.5 to 5.5 for phosphorus, creatinine should be around 1.3, BUN should be around 23 and potassium should be around 3.5 to 5.5.

When I went in February my BUN was a 41 and creatinine a 3.8 and they didn't check the other two.

As of today we got the following:

Creatinine: 2.73
Phosphorus: 4.1
Potassium: 5.0
BUN: 47

So the phosphorus and potassium are fine, the creatinine is OUTSTANDING. I have end stage renal disease. I have 20% kidney function. Yet somehow my creatinine DROPS A FULL POINT! This means my 20% kidneys are holding their own.

As for the BUN. It's high. It's lower than it was when I was taken off dialysis but it did go up 6 points since Feb. which concerns me. GI bleeds and other internal things can mess with BUN though and since the creatinine went down, I'm thinking it's something to do with the increased puking. But even though it was high, it was still low enough to keep me off dialysis as long as I'm willing to follow up with the next doctor.

I have to go to a gastroenterologist and find out what's up with the barfing. They think it's primary cause are the toxins my 20% kidneys aren't filtering into my pee. They have to come out somehow so I'm puking them out. Lovely. Hey, it's better than dialysis. Give me a barf bag over a filter machine any day. What they want to see is if any ulcers have developed or if there is damage from so much puking up toxins.

I've put this off because my mother (the Queen of Gloom and Doom) told me I'd have to get some test where they stick a tube down your throat to look at your stomach. No, no you will not. She couldn't explain how the tube goes down without my gagging over and over and choking myself or how it doesn't hurt like the end of the world so I haven't made the appointment yet.

I think it's time to face the fear and make the damn appointment.

Let's be real, I'm getting a real break here. My case still amazes the doctors, people just don't come back from ESRD. I push the limits enough with the diet I eat (but hey, it all comes back up at 7 in the morning anyway!) so let's not push it with the BUN. The low creatinine was enough for me to believe my kidneys are hanging in there so the BUN has to be stomach related. Maybe they can sedate me before they tube me, maybe they'll just want to check the puke first in the lab. Who knows, it's just time to do it.

So that's the news on that. Better than I hoped for albeit confusing. I'll leave it to the lawyer to determine if it really is ESRD or was it Kingston's stupidity that gave me chronic renal insufficiency instead, I have no clue. A true diagnosis would mean another kidney biopsy and I'm not in love with that idea. I'd do it if I needed it for court and they did it at Albany Medical Center but I've been cut open enough in the past 18 months. We'll see.

One step at a time. One small frustrating step at a time.

Today we celebrate lowered creatinine.