Sick

It’ll be a decade since I’ve been diagnosed with CKD. A decade. And though I’ve always said that I don’t let my condition define me, through life’s layers and schedules and milestones, it somehow does. My workweek is blocked off mornings for MWF treatments and as much as I want to make most of my awake time, I’ve always had to work around it: calling an early evening during nightcaps, foregoing sleep most days for fear of missing treatment, skipping morning meetings when I’m being called early at work, taking only four-day vacations. It sucks on some days, it really does. And I hate that at this point in my life, dialysis is the only solution.

But I’ve gotten a lot more used to it. I’ve accepted it, and there are days when I embrace it. Sometimes, I consider treatment as my routine workout; I need to make this 3x a week exercise so that I could stay in shape. Sometimes I think of it as sacrifice for a prize; if I go then I can enjoy the weekend ahead, stuffing myself silly with three rounds of buffet lunches with friends or fam. Sometimes, I see it as just a means to feel good because it is a lot of pain to skip it; when I do, my head sends a backlash of daylong migraines, I feel heavier and drained of energy.

So I go. I go even if I would very much like to sleep in. I go even if the thought of these damn needles terrifies me every single time. I go even if I don’t want to. I go, I go, I go. Every other day. Because that’s just the way it is, and how it’s been in the last two years or so. Thankfully, weekends give me some sortov reprieve.

Sick, I know I am; that, I can hack. But what I can’t take is this one instance when somebody decided to excuse himself from my company because of it. During a rocky part of a relationship with an ex, he questioned why we should get back together, when it will be difficult to take care of me. I think that was his true reason for cutting it off. And it wasn’t like he didn’t know from the get go, and even though I’ve never assumed that he’s to take care of me, seeing him leave then had been quite demoralizing.

But I’ve stopped beating myself up for that one bad example. CKD isn’t easy but at least I can, at this point, afford treatment; I know plenty others can’t. I’ve spent a lot of hours sitting on this lazy boy, musing, reading, Netflixing, discovering new music, sleeping, dreaming, being. And until I can get nuff monies for the next big goal, I guess I need to carve out 12 hours a week, sorta immobilized on this chair so it seems, but make no mistake: ten years, but still facing this shit head on.

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Pictured: Start them young, a watercolor illustration