Lizzie Kemp

Last week we celebrated the life of my most loyal friend, my canine friend, my dog, Lizzie. We believe that even after being treated for Addison’s disease, she developed congestive heart failure. She began to retain water for which I prescribed her Lasix (the vet later agreed it would provide her with some relief) and she moved slowly around the house.

One day when she wouldn’t come in from out of the rain when I called her, I knew it was time. She didn’t understand me, or she couldn’t hear me, or she couldn’t see well–I really couldn’t tell which was the case. I ended up having to pull her in the house out of the rain. She hadn’t eaten all day either and she was extremely weak. I called my husband at work and he agreed that we should take her to the vet to be euthanized.

The next morning was hectic with things to get done. We both had a funeral to attend for a church member’s husband. My husband is a funeral director and he was handling the service. My husband loaded Lizzy into the Suburban. He had to pick her up and even though she was heavy with fluid, she managed to stand up in the back and look out of the window.

I followed in another car. My husband said that as they approached the vet’s office, Lizzie hopped over the seat into the middle section and laid her head on the front console. My husband rubbed her ears as he drove. The he said as he began turning into the vet’s parking lot, she began to cough and slumped down onto the floor.

I parked and got out of my car to try to help them into the vet’s office. When I got to the back door, Steve said that he thought that she was dead and we got the vet. He listened to her heart and confirmed that Lizzie had no heartbeat.

The way I see it, Lizzie went on her own terms. I would imagine that she found it kind of strange that Daddy lifted her into his car so early in the morning and said the word “vet”. Daddy has never taken her to the vet. Daddy has never even met the vet. Does Daddy know the way to the vet? Might Daddy be taking me on my last ride in the car?

There would be no shot, not euthanasia for Lizzie. Perhaps the anticipation was too much for her heart. And so now, when my son chooses an urn for Lizzie’s ashes, she will join Max our Shepard / Husky mix who lived to be 13 and Bandit, my mom’s Lhasa Apso, on the mantle of pets who’ve gone on. My family thanks all of them for filling our lives with such joy.

From the Huffington Post:

Facebook Organ Donor Initiative

Prompts 100,000 Users To Select New

Option

By MIKE STOBBE 05/ 2/12 05:57 PM ET

ATLANTA — Thousands of Facebook users have signed up to be organ donors this week, thanks to a new feature on the social networking site that makes it easier to register.

The new option was announced Tuesday by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a way to boost the number of potential organ donors. By the end of the day, 6,000 people had enrolled through 22 state registries, according to Donate Life America, which promotes donations and is working with Facebook. On a normal day, those states together see less than 400 sign up.

The response “dwarfs any past organ donation initiative,” said David Fleming, chief executive of Donate Life America, in a statement.

The Facebook feature allows users to share their decision to be an organ donor on the website. More than 100,000 did that by Tuesday night, according to Facebook, which is working with Fleming’s group to encourage Facebook users to also officially register as donors with their state.

A link on the site connects to online donor registries. At least 22,000 people had followed that link as of Wednesday afternoon. Information from 22 states indicates that a third or more of them filled out the form to register, said Donate Life America spokeswoman Aisha Michel.

California – where Facebook is headquartered – reported startling results. About 70 people register online as organ donors each day. But in the 24 hours after Zuckerberg’s announcement, about 3,900 signed up.

“We’re just thankful we have this opportunity to bring more people into the process,” said Bryan Stewart, a spokesman for OneLegacy, which coordinates transplants in the Los Angeles area.

“We’re looking forward to seeing how long this activity lasts, and at what level,” he added.

Facebook, a social network site founded in 2004, has 526 million daily users around the world. It was Facebook’s idea to add the option, after Zuckerberg took a personal interest in the issue, Michel said. The feature is available in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

As with some personal information on Facebook, organ donor status can be kept private or shared publicly or only with friends.

More than 114,000 Americans are currently on waiting lists for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs, according to United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the organization that runs the nation’s transplant system. More than 6,600 died last year waiting for an organ.

According to UNOS, 43 percent of adults in the U.S. are registered as donors. Organs can only be used though under certain circumstances, such as when someone dies from a major head injury and a ventilator can keep the organs viable. Less than 1 percent of U.S. deaths annually are under such circumstances. And sometimes the opportunity is lost because family members didn’t know about the person’s wishes on organ donation.

The Facebook feature “is a unique opportunity for people to make their decision known,” UNOS Executive Director Walter Graham, said on a statement.

Most people register as organ donors when they get a driver’s licenses, but about 2 percent sign up through online registries. Both represent legal consent for adults. For children who want to be donors, parental consent is still required.

Unexpected Blessings

In my chapter of Victorious Living for Women, I talk about how we can never predict exactly where our blessings will come from. In fact I detail how my difficult period of kidney failure and dialysis was, at that time, the worst thing that had ever happened to me. My kidney transplant after seven months of dialysis then became the reason I was eligible for a pancreas transplant. And what a pancreas transplant meant was that I no longer had to follow a diabetes regimen.

As I reflected back to the time of my diabetes diagnosis at the age of seven, I recall that my grandfather and pastor told me that we would just pray that [diabetes] away.  You can imagine how my parents felt about my grandfather instilling hope into their daughter that they were talking to physicians about how to prepare me for a lifetime of diabetes management. While both my parents were Christian, they didn’t want me to be confused and spend my life waiting for a miraculous cure one day.

I didn’t spend my life waiting for that cure, and instead pushed forward to live a normal life. It wasn’t until after my pancreas transplant that I reminded my grandmother of my grandfather [now deceased]’s prayer. Could it be that he did pray it away? Why do we think that when we pray, God is somehow on the clock? That He has a timeframe in which to answer our prayer. Not only does he have a timeframe, but a manner in which He should do it. “To pray my diabetes away”, somehow seemed to me and my parents for God to perform some miracle and I would somehow be cured. A simple prong on the head and diabetes would be gone!

Who would imagine that He would use physicians and technology and achieve essentially a cure?

It is with that realization that I am careful not to predict and plan where my acts of kindness go, because I never know where my blessings will come from. In other words, I don’t decide to do nice things for people that I expect a return of good fortune. The idea of paying it forward is not finding a trading partner or deciding who is worthy to receive your gift. It is passing on a gift to someone in need or deserving, without expecting anything in return.

I recently had such an opportunity. At a Writer’s Expo, a young woman, before performing a song told the story of her intent to relocate to Georgia in order to donate a kidney to a long time friend of hers. What’s the chance that I was in that room of authors–both fiction and nonfiction–to hear this story. I was in a place to tell my story and experiences of being a two-time organ transplant recipient to someone who really needed to understand the process. I was stunned, even paralyzed to listen to her. I knew immediately that God had placed me in that place to hear her story and provide information and guidance for this transplant procedure. I wasn’t even sure why I attended this Expo; it wasn’t necessarily an event that I thought I would sell many books. But I received a blessing beyond what selling several books could provide: The blessing of knowing that my story mattered.

There are so many observances throughout the year that several of them happen simultaneously. However April’s pairing of National Minority Health Month and National Donate Life Month is not pure happenstance.

National Minority Health Month

African Americans and other ethnic minorities are plagued by a number of chronic illnesses that may not be an immediate threat to life itself; however neglect of these chronic and often preventable conditions can surely lead to an early death. Perhaps the biggest of these chronic illnesses that disproportionately plague African Americans is hypertension and diabetes. According to the National Institute of Health,

“The most common causes of kidney failure are diabetes and high blood pressure, together accounting for about 70 percent of new cases.”

That bears repeating, 70 percent of new cases of chronic kidney disease is caused by uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension—both controllable conditions. Controllable in large part by good decision making: diet and exercise, and medication prescribed by a doctor. And this brings us to the next April observance.

National Donate Life Month

National Donate Life Month promoted largely by the Gift of Life Foundation encourages people to make the decision to become organ donors, either living or at the time of death so that those waiting on the transplant list, can live. There are currently more than 110,000 people waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S. Millions of organs are wasted daily when people die without donating their organs. It is a simple process to sign up on the national organ donor registry: http://donatelife.net/register-now/

In the case of kidneys, while African Americans make up 12% of the population, we make up 32% of those on dialysis.

In April and beyond, join with me to make smart and healthy decisions to improve minority health, and please “Donate Life”—my brother Jeff (my kidney donor) and another individual (my pancreas donor)’s decisions to donate life are why I live today!

Register to become an organ donor online or at your local Secretary of State office.

Don’t take your organs with you . . .

heaven knows we need them here!

Andrea Boccelli

Did you know that Andrea Bocelli is blind? You know Bocelli, the opera singer known as the fourth tenor and disciple of Lucciano Pavaratti. I didn’t know that, and just the other day I watched the PBS fundraiser that featured Tony Bennett’s Duets II CD and Bocelli is one of the vocal collaborators. No, I’m no opera buff, but I enjoy classical music while writing and like to understand the music.

To listen to Bocelli’s classically trained voice is romantic bliss, even as my fingers type along the keyboard. It doesn’t surprise me that he is blind however, for there have been several other great singers and musicians who are blind—Stevie Wonder, Diane Shuur, Ray Charles, Jose Feliciano just to name a few. It’s just that when a person perfects their craft, you imagine that they used all of their resources to achieve it. How does one understand beauty without sight?

Therein lies the complexity of perfection. Perhaps it is not the quantity of resources or specific resources that reach perfection, but the desire to reach perfection.

I don’t believe it ends with music and blindness. Chronic illness does lots of things to us—makes us tired, susceptible to other illnesses and infection which create another list of problems in addition to the ones we already deal with on a daily basis. It can appear to be a downward spiral if we don’t keep that saying in mind, “When one door closes, another opens”. Bocelli can’t read music and so he overcompensates by listening. In other words, because kidney failure or a heart condition forces you to change direction, it doesn’t mean that you cannot perfect another craft; maybe even something that you really wanted, rather than what you’ve been doing.

So how do you make that transition from the closed to the open door? Here are some suggestions

1. 1.     Recall what some of the things you’ve always wanted to do are, but somehow never got around to them. Perhaps school took you in a different direction—accounting instead of guitar; maybe the man (or woman) of your dreams came along and instead of pursuing your dream, you were pursued; maybe starting a family got in the way of the perfect career. Think back to what got you up without an alarm clock.

 

1. 2.     What do you enjoy doing most? Optimally we are already living the dream! Maybe you have already made a career of what you love most. And if you have, great, figure out how to do it in harmony with the medical deficits that you may now have. But if you weren’t living the dream, really reach back and imagine what makes you most happy.

 

1. 3.     What do you need this new venture to do? Is it a hobby or a job? If you are already independently wealthy, perhaps you don’t need to make what you love earn a living. And even in that case, a hobby that you love and can perfect is important to self worth. We all need a project, or something that adds to our value. But if you are one of the 99% of us, and need that project to also earn a living, then you need a plan for that to happen.

 

 

1. 4.     How can you make money doing it? Explore all the ways people earn a living doing what you love to do. Imagine yourself doing it and what you would need in the way of support, materials, time and routine.

 

1. 5.     Finally, say it out loud so that others will hold you accountable, practice and perfect it!

 

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of chronic kidney disease is the diet.  After you get past figuring out how you will schedule dialysis and what you need to do in order to have energy and strength, you find that diet plays a large role in making that happen.

Salt Restriction

Phosphorus Restrictions

Potassium Restrictions