Once upon a time ...

For most of the last year I have anticipated sitting down to develop my experiences abroad into something deeper and touching more upon, with the benefit of hindsight, my emotional states at the time.  India in particular unsettled me deeply and I have struggled to find the language to express how it left me when I left it in the spring of 2010.  However, the direction of the next few threads will concern another facet of my life; one somewhat related to my Indian experience.  Almost twelve years ago, in August of 2001, I was diagnosed with kidney failure.  The first two years were a wild ride, comparable in a number of ways with my experience in India - it was a paradox of the intense and the ordinary, being hungry without being sated, and interminable in that instantaneous way - an off year of life.

Then from 2003 on my life returned to its normal trajectory - I started a career teaching, I lived in a few apartments before buying the duplex where I currently live, and as you all know I traveled enviably, extensively.  Thanks to the generosity of my uncle Bruce and many many others, my life was barely compromised by my chronic illness.  Like India, the period of my early twenties feels comfortably distant, dim on my horizon.  

Yet while I can choose to avoid the subcontinent in my future, my transplanted kidney function will most likely slow, and at some point it will need to be removed, setting in motion the same machinations that interrupted my senior year of college.  No one can say when that might happen - there are few people in my situation who might serve as guides, I am otherwise healthy - there was no known cause for my illness, and I am very young relative to most people with kidney failure.  I have labs done every few months to keep an eye on my blood levels.  With a few small adjustments, I have been on the same course for nine years.  Recently, however, my numbers have started to creep, and labs done last week indicate that there might be something wrong.  

There are so many aspects to these stories that I have not told - so many of my thoughts and feelings.  It is difficult to create a linear narrative.  This was my initial hope with this blog- to suss out the untold details and meta-narratives of my world travels; how the music I listened to in different countries remains locked there - lilacs, perfume or that smell in an old brick building - I turned on Beach House to sit down now and my mind keeps playing images from Morocco.  Morocco feels as distant to me as it must to you until this music starts and slam I am on a bus, climbing a hill, lonely and scared, clinging to the English speaking travelers I met.  

I had labs done today to double check the results from last week.  Leaving the clinic I called C and opened a bit in the car.  I flashed back to a number of episodes that continue to resonate in my memory - experiences impossible to relate.  Flashes of being in a dialysis center, of outpatient procedures, of doctors and nurses, 9/11, coffee shops - all neatly associated with this pervasive facet of myself that has been dormant.  I had not yet written about India because I knew it would be right there waiting for me.  I knew that time would not dim what I had experienced there.  Even so, I underestimated how close these 'kidney' experiences were to me.  

I have not talked about almost any of this publicly for reasons that are difficult to explain or understand myself.  I often think that I do not want to complain or sound whiny, but it also feels private to me, like a secret weapon almost.  Certainly some psycho-babble could explain a lot of this.  Even what I wrote so far has felt intimate.  

The labs look at a few indicators of kidney performance, most importantly creatinine.  Creatinine is exclusively cleared by the kidneys and thus is a useful indicator of kidney function, and it was my creatinine levels that have recently caused alarm and raised this blog post.  

A 'normal' creatinine is 1.0 - mine had floated around 1.5 - 1.7 for years.  When I returned from traveling, the number drifted up to around 1.9 - or roughly 50% of healthy kidney function.  In the last few weeks it spiked at 2.1 and then last week at 2.35.  That is a pretty high number, and the clinic responded by scheduling a biopsy for next Tuesday, pending similar labs drawn today.  

So that's where we sit today - wait for the numbers.  It's possible the numbers will adjust and we will be back to normal and wiping the sweat from our brows in relief.  Yet I must confess that this most recent health incident is weighing heavily on me.  The world shifts slightly on its axis with a potential adjustment like this on the horizon and I'm not terribly hopeful about it.  

This afternoon, however, it is summer.  Tony and I posted quite well in another Urban Assault, 5th overall this time.  C and I are planning on burgers, wine and backgammon tonight.  And I'm thinking about buying a new bike!  All very exciting things going on, and now time for an afternoon nap.  

Thanks for reading!