Where's Shirley?

I feel like it's been eons since I last posted but it's only been 10 days. Sorry I haven't even been visiting everyone else's sites much.

First off I want to show you want I got in the mail today from Angela

Isn't it great? I have it hanging on the cupboard in the kitchen beside the sink. I love having seasonal stuff around. And she sent me two knit dishcloths too:

I use knit dishcloths all the time because they are so great for cleaning up crumbs and other larger hunks of stuff *LOL*

So much has happened. But I'll try to keep it short. My appointment at the clinic really did scare me. I'm not afraid to die it's just that if someone is telling me that I could die in my 60's then I'd like to know when so I can get all the stuff done that I want to get done. There is a possibility that I will live longer than that but that's where my head was so I had to do a mental check to prioritize what I want to get done.

First is my daughter's wedding quilt, of course, so instead of jumping from one thing to another I need to focus on that and get it done. Then I can work on other things.

My cleaning up and clearing out resolutions have to be done. And I've started to do that. I've got two rooms cleaned out and now want to rip off wallpaper and paint.

I need to begin cooking and baking from scratch more so I can stick to my diet restrictions. I hate cooking mostly unless it's simple recipes. There's so much else I'd rather be doing. But I'm trying.

I also need to get into an exercise program so we went and bought a Treadmill which is being delivered tomorrow. Sears had amazing deals on these things, basically half price, and all three of us could benefit from it.

Last, but certainly not least is I want my father's name out there. I want people to know what he contributed to medical history by being willing to be an experiment so the doctors could learn. I contacted the Kidney Foundation of Canada and they suggested I enter their Stories of Hope contest. I don't want to enter a contest, I just want the information out there but what the heck. If I enter and win the Foundation gets $2500 and I get $500 which I would automatically donate back. I don't want the money. She also suggested I draft a longer story for their consideration to be put on their website.

This is the story I've written but not edited yet for their contest.
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On October 23, 1963 54 year old Verne Trewin lay in a hospital bed at Ottawa Civic hospital. His only kidney had failed and his wife Gretta was told she had two choices. Be a widow by 5pm or rush him to Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal for a highly experimental transplant operation. She chose the transplant. He was put on dialysis in Montreal to await a suitable kidney. One month later on November 23, 1963 he was wheeled into an operating room to receive a kidney from a patient who had passed away that morning. The doctors had successfully transplanted a kidney from one living twin to another and were theorizing that it would be possible to transplant a kidney from a cadaver to a living recipient, even if they weren’t related, as long as they had the same blood type. Their first 3 attempts had failed. With my father they found the success and proof they were looking for and were able to move on beyond the operation to discover what drugs and care the recipient would need to avoid rejection of the new organ.

It was a long 10 months with many ups and downs but eventually my parents were able to return to their home in Ottawa. A lot of the success was due to the doctors but a huge contribution was my mother’s loving presence. She stayed by his side every moment, except for the 8 hours she slept at night in a nearby rooming house, and learned everything she could about how to take care of him, including gowning up and changing his dressings herself. When they returned home she continued to take care of his physical needs, keeping the wound clean and monitoring his vital signs and diet. He made weekly trips to Montreal for outpatient checks. In approximately April of 1965 that first kidney failed. A second attempt at transplantation was not made. His body had been so ravaged by the medications the doctors had used trying to find exactly what worked that it was worn out. He was put back on dialysis and eventually passed away on June 30, 1965.

The good news is that because of his contribution over those 19 months doctors were able to conduct further successful transplants and save lives. Her parent’s contribution was something that a 13 year old girl who had just lost her father couldn’t appreciate. In the mid 1990’s at a church in Delta, B.C. I met a couple whose teenage son had received a life saving transplant in Winnipeg in 1965 – the year my father died. He was still alive 30 years later. His type of disease was one that destroyed the donor kidney but he subsequently received a second kidney from his sister shortly after I met his parents. Now he is still alive 45 years later. I finally got to see the miracle.

I have Polycystic Kidney Disease myself and it’s comforting to know that my own father paved the way for future generations of kidney patients, even his own daughter.
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I have all of the newspaper articles from 1965 and am thinking of posting them on a separate blog for people to read. I didn't know a lot of what was going on because I was so young that my family wanted to protect me. A lot of the stuff I just learned now at 58 years old.