Qnarf’s Blog

Just had a doctor’s appointment today with my nephrologist (kidney doctor) to discuss recent test results.  Those results are:

Creatinine:  Has gone up, but not by much (up is not good)

Phosphorus:  Has gone up, by a bit (again, up is not good)

GFR (calculated rate of kidney function):  Down, by a few points (down is not good)

Other levels and blood pressure:  Stable

He and I chatted for a bit; this time I didn’t get the glowing review that I did last time, though I didn’t get a “negative” review.  What I took away from the conversation:

I need to watch my phosphorus levels and keep a better eye on them, though I’m not in any danger level yet.  I know that lately we’ve “cheated” a bit more for dinner and such for various reasons, and I’ve eaten some things that I didn’t check on first to see if they were low in phosphorus or not (sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t).  Possibly not having cereal for breakfast will help with this (dairy products contain higher phosphorus levels).

As for the creatinine level increase, the increase was pretty small so there wasn’t too much concern about it….this time.  I know that creatinine is linked with muscles and such, and it’s possible that I’ve been exerting myself too much at hapkido/taekwondo practice and overworking my body.  It’s also linked to general kidney function as well, so general degradation of kidney function can increase this number as well.

As for my GFR rating, well, the base number is down a bit, to about 45.  A more calculated rating of that number (which included more of my personal stats) brought it up to 53.  Talking with him confused me a bit on the subject, but I got that these numbers were tied to where my creatinine and other levels were right now, and could possibly fluctuate.  When he had performed “extra” tests at the beginning of this about a year ago, they showed that my “true” GFR was in the low 70s, the base number somewhere in the high 50s.  For general knowledge, once my GFR drops below 15 I’ll need to start dialysis (or very soon after).

It’s kinda hard to determine what this all means, and I’m going to try to not jump to any conclusions.  Since it’s time anyway (they happen yearly), I will need to go through some more “extra” tests in a couple months which will give the doctor another “true” GFR reading.  Till then, I need to work on keeping my stress and blood pressure down, and work on fixing my levels where I can.  Once he has some more data he might be able to better predict my rate of decline.

::sigh::

As I was rocking my daughter to sleep tonight, I was thinking of how fast time seems to have gone since she was born, and how near she is to being one year old.  Then another thought occurred to me: it’s been almost a year since I found out for sure that I have CKD.  Wow.  All the usual thoughts went through my head, like “can it really have been that long” and such, and then another thought went through my head:

It’s been nearly a year and I’m still holding it off.

The actual significance of that thought may pass most people by.  I’m pretty good at holding my feelings in when I want to, and around the time that I found out that I have CKD my daughter was born, so as you can imagine I stayed pretty busy (which was a blessing in and of itself) and I had more important things to think about than myself.  Also, when telling people about it, I would try and become as emotionally detached as possible so as to not think about it too much myself.

But of course, that never worked.  Or if I did succeed in not “feeling it” when I had to tell someone else, I would immediately start thinking about it again later.  And again, and again, and again…..  It was something that I couldn’t escape.  I was thinking about it all the time, from thinking of all the new restrictions on my diet, on how it would change my life, on how it had changed (and shortened) my father’s life….  I had created for myself the perfect hell; what hell could be more perfect than one of my own design?  And to make matters worse, the more I dwelt on it the worse my blood pressure got, and that of course makes my decline go faster, so I ended up dwelling on it more, etc.  

To be sure, I had/have an excellent reason to be depressed.  And from what I understand, depression can be a major problem to people with CKD.  My father had told me more than once about someone not lasting a year or two once they found out, and it wasn’t because they were too old or something.  I think by and large we humans avoid the subject of our own mortality, at least in regards to exactly how much time we have left.  Since CKD by it’s very nature is a chronic disease that will not go away, no matter how much you try or wish (transplants, btw, help, but do not cure, as people who get transplants often still have to eventually go on dialysis (the disease can attack the new kidney, starting the process over again)), you have to actually face the fact that your life just got a timer put on it.  Yes, technically everybody’s life has a timer, but the difference is in the knowing, the thinking about it.  You still don’t actually know how long you have left, but you know it’s likely to be shorter than those around you.  Significantly shorter.  And for people like me, who got to watch a father die slowly of it…..  ::sigh::

As time has passed, I have learned how to cope with it better, I think.  Though it’s still something I think about all the time (I think I will forever be thinking about it all the time), I do my best to try and focus on what I can do, not what I can’t, and what I can live for, not on how the disease is progressing.  By and large, I do still “have my health”, so to speak.  I can still get around and do things, and it will likely be a very long time before I can’t, even taking my father’s decline into consideration.  No, I can’t eat everything that I want anymore, but I know there are many out there with worse restrictions.  And if I have a more limited time on this earth, then I will try to appreciate what time I have.  

I hope my rambling words will have given you a better insight to the significance of what I said above, “It’s been nearly a year and I’m still holding it off”.  It’s a change of perspective from before, a more positive approach.  I can’t promise, not even to myself, especially not to myself, that from now on I won’t be depressed at times.  But perhaps I can look back at this different kind of anniversary, this anniversary of holding my kidney failure back, and work positively towards celebrating it again the next year.  

And perhaps instead of focusing on how I can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, I should look around me and see how much light is already in the tunnel.  My beautiful wife and daughter…..  My supportive family….  My wonderful friends…..    

::smile::  It’s been nearly a year and I’m still holding it off.

So I’m now a owner of the new iPhone 3G.  To get this out of the way:

It’s flippin’ awesome.  

However, though, for me, most of the really cool stuff isn’t because of the new iPhone being 3G; our current area doesn’t have 3G coverage (probably will before too much longer, but not right now), so the faster speed doesn’t matter.  The GPS is awesome, but that’s another small aspect of the phone.  And all the aesthetic changes are nice touches, like the plastic backing that fits the hand nicer, the now non-recessed headphone port, and the changes to the sound quality.

Most of the awesomeness so far has actually come from the fact that it’s already loaded with the 2.0 update.  This update, for those that didn’t know (or care :)), included a ton of new features for the phone.  One feature I thought was just going to be cool, but it’s just flat out awesome:  the ability to use Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.  Using this feature, if I add/change a contact, calendar, or email item on my iPhone, it is damn near instantaneously updated on my Exchange account.  Even better, it works the other way as well, so if I add a calendar item in Outlook/Entourage before I can get to my iPhone it’s there.  Also, email now appears on my iPhone as it comes in, rather than having to wait for it to sync to my account.  That is seriously cool.  

Another really good thing about the update is that it brought (official) third party app support, and because of that I’m finding new things I never heard of before, like Pandora Radio.  This internet radio service intrigues me, since how it works is it asks you what your favorite artist, composer, or etc. is and bases a personalized music stream out of that.  You give each song ratings as it comes up and it constantly adjusts to your preferences.  For example, I gave it the composer Nobuo Uematsu (responsible for many of the Final Fantasy games), and surprisingly it immediately popped up a couple songs by him, and then by analyzing my thumbs up/thumbs down to the songs it picked, it chose songs by different artists/composers that matched that style, i.e. “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this song because it features new age aesthetics, an overall meditative sound, acoustic sonority, extended piano soloing and minor key tonality”.

Now if finding this new internet radio service wasn’t sweet enough, there is already a app for the iPhone that let’s you listen to internet radio wherever you are.  This didn’t really hit me until I saw one guys comment saying that he used it in his car on the cellular data network and everything was flawless.  Just…. wow.  Taken far enough, this could actually be some serious competition for satellite radio services like XM Radio and Sirius.  Not only is this commercial free music, the service tries to work with what you want to listen to, and is absolutely free.  Not only that, if you don’t like Pandora Radio, AOL Music already has a app for the iPhone that lets you listen to their music as well.  

But enough about the phone and it’s features themselves.  The actual experience of getting the phone, for the most part, was good.  I’m glad that I went and stood in line at 6 am for a couple reasons.  Firstly, when I arrived at the store there were already 7 other people in line (though one wasn’t buying a phone herself, she was only there because her son was).  People kept coming to stand in line over the next couple of hours, and by the time the store opened I estimated that there were about 30-40 people or more waiting.  Unfortunately for some of them, it turns out the store only had 30 iPhones in stock, and by 10 am they had to start turning people away (essentially; I think they would allow you to sign up for a waiting list if you wanted, but there would be no promise of when they would get more iPhones in stock, i.e. could be weeks).

And secondly, it actually comes as no surprise that Apple’s servers started getting hammered shortly after 8 am and stayed that way all day.  I talked to a AT&T yesterday afternoon and found out that I really was one of the lucky ones, since some of the people I was standing next to in line still didn’t have their phones activated by 2 in the afternoon.  AT&T actually had to break standard policy and let some people take the phones home not yet activated just because they couldn’t have these people clogging their registers up all afternoon.

Not everything about the process went well, however.  The general plan yesterday was that I would switch my cell number from my old iPhone to the new one, and then reactivate the old iPhone, transferring our home number to it.  Well, the switch from my old phone to the new one was the only easy part of the process.  It turns out that AT&T had just trained their sales reps on what to do with the new iPhones (activating and switching) just that morning.  The sales rep that I got was a really nice person, and I sincerely think that she was knowledgeable on AT&T’s other line of products, however she was kinda clueless about, well, everything that I asked her about.

I asked her about transferring from one phone to another.  She said that can be done, no problem, but had to get help to do it.  I asked her a question about what data plan I needed to get.  She had to find another sales associate to get the answer.  I asked about reactivating the old phone and converting my plan to a family one.  She, stumped, had to get the manager (who, apparently, was the only one authorized to ferry new iPhones from the safe in back to the front staff, so she was pretty busy and hard to get ahold of).

Like I said, kind but clueless.  The answers I finally did get, though, was that I should be able to do all of the reactivating once I got home through iTunes, so home I went with my new iPhone in hand and a old one that now operated as a expensive iPod Touch.  At home, I played around with my new iPhone for a bit and then went to iTunes to activate the old phone.  I plugged it in, iTunes said it was connecting to the store, I waited 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, then a bit more, and finally something happened: iTunes spewed back a “unknown error”.  I tried again.  Same result.  Well, I figured that perhaps their servers were getting hit hard (this being a little bit after 8 am on launch day), so I decided to wait till later.

At 1:30 in the afternoon, I try again.  Same basic error, but it spews something back that kinda indicates to me that the phone’s information may need to be erased before this process can begin.  So I pick up the old phone, go through the menus and find a button to erase all settings and content.  I push it, then say yes to the confirmation.  The iPhone indicates that everything is being erased…. and then reboots and shows that it’s connected to one of the local networks.  That requires extra things set.  So it didn’t get everything.  OK…….  So I go in, and pick all the erase options, one by one.  This time I know everything is erased, because now it’s showing that I have to activate it to use it.  Cool, now I’m ready to begin….

…. or so I thought, because when I open iTunes, I now get a different “unknown error”.  Great, I’m holding a device that had some purpose in life, and now it’s less useful than Fox News.  Wonderful.  Well, what can I do at this point but go to the AT&T store?  Theoretically, they should know what’s going on and be able to help.  Once I get there, I actually get to speak to the manager immediately, who is nice and knowledgeable…. except about what’s going on.  The best she can tell me is to wait, because Apple’s servers are so clogged that even the AT&T store doesn’t have a solid connection to them.  

Back home I go again, and this time I wait until 9 pm to try again, and this time, success!  Well…. mostly.  It turns out some of the info that I was given at the AT&T store was wrong, and I can’t change my account to a family plan within iTunes, that’s something I need to call AT&T about directly.  So this morning (after checking that iTunes is still working) I call AT&T and actually get a human right away (as in after a couple rings a person answers; surprises me enough that I actually ask if I’m speaking to a human).  15 minutes later I’m switched to a family plan.  This time when I go back to iTunes everything works, and now the old phone is activated, though the number transfer will take some time (I knew about that before hand; at least the phone can be used to make outgoing calls and do everything else in the mean time).  Whew!  My wife now has the old phone and she loves it, especially since we got it updated with the new 2.0 update so she gets to use almost every new feature that I can. 

So that, my friends, was my experience in getting the new iPhone 3G.  The device has been well worth the wait, and now that the whole thing with the reactivation is over (well, mostly over) we can look back and chuckle.  Well, I can at least.  My wife?

She’s too damn busy playing with her new iPhone.  :)

You know, most of the time I really enjoy teaching martial arts.  I’ve been practicing martial arts for a total of about 8 1/2 years, and I’ve been an instructor of them for about 6 of those years.  I’ve taught group classes and private lessons.  I’ve performed at demonstrations and judged at competitions.  And I’ve done all of this for virtually nothing, since the instructors at the school where I teach do not get paid (in “real money”; we can continue our own training for free, when we have the time).  So you know I must enjoy it, if I’m willing to spend so much time and effort for no monetary gain.

But there are times when I want to just give up being and instructor and go back to being just a student.  One of those times was last night.

There is a student of mine who is about 10 years old, is a green belt in Taekwondo, and he doesn’t want to come to classes.  He’s told me this, and a few other instructors.  He has admitted on more than one occasion that the only reason he is there is because his father, who is somewhat of a martial arts aficionado himself, makes him.  We have to keep on him at all times to maintain discipline, because the only reason this kid is respectful or learning at all is due to the fact he knows swift punishment (i.e. push-ups or sit-ups) will happen if he falls out of line.  So this kid does the absolute bare minimum during classes and is constantly walking a fine line between grudging respect and outright rebellion.

It is because of this attitude that the kid is still a green belt.  You see, he’s actually been coming to classes for quite a while, and under normal circumstances the kid should already be something like a blue belt, or even brown.  But our standards are such that we won’t promote somebody who doesn’t deserve the belt, so he has been held back from testing.  It’s pretty simple:  Taekwondo has forms.  You need to know the forms appropriate to the belt level.  He doesn’t, and since he doesn’t want to learn, he just mimics the moves of those around him (which doesn’t really work) and never practices them at home.  So we’ve told him that he won’t test until he knows his forms.  And that in turn has led to his mother starting to show up during classes.

For a little while, the mother was quiet.  She would sit on the side and read a book or a magazine through class, and take her son home afterward.  Typical of a parent with time on their hands just waiting for their child to be done.  Then, a few weeks ago, out of the blue she goes up to one of the other instructors and claims that we aren’t teaching her child the forms.  He tells her that we do teach forms during class, just not every night (often there is so much to teach that we don’t get to forms each class; that’s why people are supposed to come to multiple classes a week).  The subject is quickly dropped, but we made a effort to put forms higher on the list of things to do each night.

And then came last night.  Keep in mind that we have worked on forms at least once a week for the past I don’t know how long.  When I got there (I was running a little bit late), they were already working on forms.  After dressing out, I got the task of putting this kid through his forms.  While working with him on forms that he should already know, I asked him if he was practicing at home.  He told me no and rolled his eyes at his mom, clearly indicating that he thought I was an idiot or something.  I turned to his mom and said that he needed to be practicing these forms at home.  She said how can he practice them at home when you guys don’t teach him the forms?  She then follows that up by saying there isn’t anybody who’s at their house who knows the forms, so how can he practice them at home?

Since this is already a long-ish post, I’ll shorten the remainder of the conversation, and one that I had with her later.  I claimed that we did teach forms in class.  She basically claimed that I was lying to her, despite the fact that:

1. I asked a few other students and the other instructors right before her whether or not we taught forms in that class, and they all said yes, we did.
2. There are other students who just take the same classes that this kid does, and they know there forms (and in some cases, a lot more forms than the kid does)
3. And finally, I was freaking teaching the kid forms right in front of her eyes!

Whenever I tried to put the blame on the kid, she tried telling us that we weren’t teaching him, or that he has a slight learning disability (first I’ve heard about it….), or that no one was around to help him.  I kept my patience, though I desperately wanted to throw something (her and her kid, for a start….).  In the end, I think I finally got the point across to her, and so that the mother has less of a footing to stand on I’m going to obtain written versions of the forms so the kid can take them home with him (and make several copies, in case he “loses” them).

It is just so freaking frustrating dealing with a parent who is basically blind to their child’s faults.  I do understand that it can be a hard thing to hear that your child is falling behind, and that it’s their own damn fault.  I understand her feelings that perhaps we’re just not working enough with her special boy.  And I do also understand that you don’t want other people thinking you are a bad parent or anything and you don’t want this conversation “public”, but frankly there’s nothing I can do about that (it’s not a good idea to have a truly “private conversation” with either a parent or child, since it then turns into your word against theirs if someone accuses somebody of something).

But really, you know what, we are not running classes based around this boy’s needs.  We have many, many other students to think about and work with, and they need help as well.  This class is actually privledged to have three instructors; most other classes make due with just one.  We try our best during each class to give each student some personal attention, but we just can’t have a class that based around a kid who claims he can’t learn his forms, and can’t seem remember the most basic forms that have only 2 moves in them that get repeated!  Now, if he was a new student and actually had a learning disability, that would be one thing.  But this kid has learned his forms and tested past yellow and orange belts already, proving he can learn and remember the forms.  He just doesn’t want to.  And his parents (mainly the dad) don’t want to accept that he doesn’t want to do this and keeps shoving him into classes.

::sigh::  At this point, there’s not much that we as instructors can really do.  The kid is disrespectful at times and is a pain in the ass, but he hasn’t actually crossed a line where we can expel him.  Normally, if a kid doesn’t want to do it this much, it’s the parent that gets the point and stops bringing them.  Usually they see that the kid isn’t getting anything out of class and they quickly stop wanting to pay.  The best thing that I can do right now is get the written versions of the forms to both the kid and his parents, and I’ll hand them to the mom herself.  And we’re possibly going to start a written log of when the kid gets taught forms.  Eventually, though, I have the feeling I’m going to have to have another talk with his parents.  ::sigh::

I tell you what, though, I must have mellowed over the years or something.  A lady comes in and has the balls to call me a liar in front of my students?  I had full grounds right then to throw her and her child out of the class, and if it were a few years ago I might have.  So what stopped me?  Well, one, I think I have more patience that I did then.  And two, perhaps now I’m simply wise enough to notice that the lady was doing such a splendid job of making a bloody fool of herself.  Nothing like calling the instructor a liar when the whole damn class (minus one whiny kid) says the instructor is telling the truth.

You almost have to admire that kind of person.  Without them, the world would be berefit of some of the truly great movies.

Like Ultraviolet.

Maybe I don’t really wanna know
How your garden grows cos I just wanna fly
Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain as it soaks you to the bone
Maybe I just want to fly,
Wanna live, I dont wanna die
Maybe I just want to breathe
Maybe I just don’t believe
Maybe you’re the same as me
We see things they’ll never see
You and I are gonna live forever

I said maybe I don’t really wantna know
How your garden grows cos I just wanna fly
Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain as it soaks you to the bone

Maybe I will never be
All the things that I wanna be
But now is not the time to cry
Now’s the time to find out why
I think you’re the same as me
We see things they’ll never see
You and I are gonna live forever

Maybe I don’t really want to know
How your garden grows cos I just wanna fly
Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain as it soaks you to the bone
Maybe I just want to fly,
Wanna live, I dont wanna die
Maybe I just want to breathe
Maybe I just don’t believe
Maybe you’re the same as me
We see things they’ll never see
You and I are gonna live forever
We’re gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Gonna live forever

–  “Live Forever” by Oasis, off of the album “Definitely Maybe”

A friend of mine recently posted this:  Playing in Puddles - Actions Speak Louder

I went and watched the linked video, and wow.  Just wow.  McCain’s people felt it necessary, actually necessary, to remove a 60 year old librarian from the premises of a building McCain was talking in, just because the librarian was holding a sign saying “McCain = Bush”.  She wasn’t carrying any visible weapons.  She didn’t seem about to tackle McCain’s bodyguards and go for the throat.  Heck, she didn’t even, when confronted, raise her voice.  She was just carrying a sign.

Now, obvious euphemisms aside, you can tell that this is a sign made by a librarian (or at least a intelligent person).  It has a message to it that is simple, unassuming, and profound all at the same time.  And while I don’t completely agree with the sign (in some ways I think McCain is worse, if possible), I frankly don’t see what the problem is.  It’s not promoting political upheaval or private militias.  It’s not a call to war (or peace).  Heck, it’s not even about gay marriage.  It’s just one person’s opinion about a presidential candidate, the beauty of it being how can any staunch republican take real offense to it?

And the thought that McCain’s people would actually go out of their way to censor this….. ugh.  It kinda sickens me.  And what I can’t really get past is, if McCain’s people (and McCain himself) can’t even “defend” against the allegation that he and Bush are alike, how in the hell is this man supposed to lead us?  I mean, really, didn’t anybody ever tell these people that in a battle, of mettle, metal, or words, if you don’t think you can deal with punch you don’t try to block it, you deflect it.  You meet the attack and then deflect it in such a way as to put your opponent off balance.  You would think that people mired in politics would know that.

Of course, in a battle of wits between McCain and a 60 year old librarian….  I know who I’m betting on. 

I recently read a blog post on Penny Arcade’s site that was posted by Gabe that dealt with his issues with a local GameStop/EB (for those who don’t know, they are now owned by the same people so I consider them to be interchangeable, a laughable thing since we have one of each in our local mall).  The issue has been one that I’ve heard and dealt with many a time myself: a person goes in right at launch to buy a game and they tell them that sorry, since you didn’t reserve the game it’s completely sold out, and what a bad person you are for not having reserved said game.  That person then goes to the local Target or Best Buy or Circuit City or what have you and finds, lo and behold, stacks of the game!  He purchases the game, cusses out GameStop/EB, and goes about his merry way.

Now, I’ve heard stories of this ilk many a time before and I’ve actually experienced this myself, going in to GameStop and being told they were already sold out to just walk to the Target some hundreds of feet away and finding that they have plenty of the game in.  What makes things different this time is two items mentioned in the post and subsequent links.  The first one just sickens me: that there have been reports that GameStop/EB employees have actually been told to tell people that they are out of stock for a game (when they aren’t) for the first day or two so that they can increase their reserve rates.  Now, I worked at a GameStop for several months (in the Christmas season nonetheless), and while we were told to basically push reservations and make people feel bad if they didn’t reserve it, I can at least say we weren’t told to outright lie.  That’s just…. I just…. wow.  I just don’t have words for how that would make me feel.  If I ever found that my local GameStop/EB was doing that, I would never, ever purchase anything from them again.

The second item I initially thought was insightful and if nothing else a bit informative, but the more I thought about it the more it annoyed me.  It was a link to the 28 Confessions of a GameStop Shift Supervisor.  Now, I actually sat down and read my way through this lengthy post, and after working at GameStop I really can’t say that what he says is false.  Yes, when I was working there we loved customers who would reserve things and buy into the stupid discount card.  We were required to keep our “numbers” (i.e. how many reservations and discount card sales we did) up or we would be threatened with reduced hours and termination.  And frankly we were always too understaffed to keep a good eye on everything so gutting a game to put the box out was one of the few ways we could keep shoplifters at bay.  And yes, we hated those customers who brought in their N64, Playstation 1, and the 30 games they had to go with it for trade right before the store closed.  I understand this guy’s frustrations, I really do.  But you know what, dude?  If you don’t like it that much, get a different job!  I mean, seriously, if it bothers you that much what people say and do, get out now!

Also, I’m sorry, but GameStop/EB has really turned into a pawn shop over the past several years.  Yes, they still sell new games, but the whole emphasis any more is completely on used game sales and trade-ins.  If you want to purchase a new game from one of these stores you really do have to reserve it, and woe be to you if you take the reservation off.  I just went in the other day to take the reservation off of Assassin’s Creed so I could use the money on something else, also because I wasn’t sure if I wanted the game right now.  I had to deal with flak from the sales clerk trying to get me to buy the game that I didn’t want!  And when I assured him for the 4th time or so that I didn’t want to get that game, he asked me if I wanted to use that money to reserve another game!  When I had already told him that I wanted to use the money to purchase an item I had brought up there!  Good grief, people.  In the end, I had to tell him that I was removing the reservation due in part to financial reasons, which is about the one area that the clerks won’t try to pry into (too dangerous of an area).  It’s about enough to make me never want to enter the store again and only make my purchases either online or at a Best Buy or something.

In the end, someone commented somewhere on the article (I don’t remember where now) and basically said that the last thing they need is a guide on how to shop at a GameStop/EB.  I fully agree.  And really, if you want me to read your guide on how to shop at your store, how about you read a guide on how to work with customers?  What do we want?  It’s simple: a place to go look at games, for you guys to have the utterly new ones in stock (if it came out today, is super popular, and everybody wants it, stock more than 2 of them), and to not be hassled when we come up to the register or while we are walking around in the store.  If you make a store where the customer doesn’t feel like they have to make a reservation to be liked and the staff doesn’t push them around, “they will come”.

The second major topic I want to touch on are those who review games.  Again, the item that made me think was a post on Penny Arcade’s blog, and again it was by Gabe.  Basically, he talked about the recent reviews of Assassin’s Creed and the varied scores that the game is getting.  He was playing the game himself (and loving it) when he read some of these lower scores and the reasons why, so he decided to try and push himself to finish the game.  What he found was that when he pushed himself to finish the game quickly, he didn’t like the game much anymore.  This brings up several thoughts, the foremost being should game reviewers push to get the review out at soon as possible and have to finish the game quickly, or should they wait and take things at a slower pace?

For myself, of course I would love for a reviewer to take things a bit slower because that’s how I’m going to play the game myself.  I rarely play a game to just get to the end as fast as possible, and only then do I do it because there is playability after the game is “finished” (LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is a perfect example of this, as you can beat the game and only have technically finished 40% of what the game offers).  But is this possible?  I know that when I’m eager to go purchase a game or if I have one on reserve and I need to find out if purchasing it is a good idea or not, I want that review out either on the day of the release or before.  But what about this case?  And who could decide which games get the long treatment vs. a shorter one?  ::sigh::  I don’t know.  I guess the best solution would be for game manufacturers to get the actual street copy of the game to the reviewers earlier.  Then perhaps they can give each game the time they deserve.

And for my final thing that I wish to discuss, it’s actually how much I’ve been playing games lately.  :)  It may come as a surprise to some, but really I haven’t been playing games nearly as much lately as I used to.  And “used to” encompasses a time that was only a few months ago.  I do know of a couple obvious things that have changed since then.  One is of course Natalie, my new daughter, and the other one was finding out that I have CKD.  Now, I don’t want this post to go maudlin again, so I will be mindful of what I say.  In short, if you had the choice between spending time with your family or sitting in a room by yourself playing video games, which would you choose when you actually know your time on this Earth is numbered?  Yes, yes, I did get a good report from the doctor the last time I went, and nothing has really changed since then.  And I do plan on being around for a good long while.  I haven’t annoyed nearly enough people yet.  :)  But gone from my life is that feeling that I have a “bunch of time left” to do what I want, that feeling of freedom that you have that you don’t really feel it till it’s gone.

What does this mean for my video game playing?  Merely that I’m more aware of what time I spend playing games, and how that takes me away from my family.  I’m not going to stop playing!  I like playing video games and I think they are a good tool for relaxing.  But I think I am going to just naturally cut down on the time I spend playing, and try to confine it to times where I wouldn’t be missed, like when nobody’s home, or Natalie’s sleeping, or whatever.  It’s not that I’m going to stop taking time out for myself, because I know I do need to do that, but I’m simply going to try and be more aware of what opportunities and use them when I can.  Will I succeed?  Who knows?  But I have to try.  I just don’t want to wind up being one of those fathers who, when their children are teenagers and about to leave the house, says “I should have been there more, and I should have taken advantage of the time when they were young”.  I know I won’t be there for all the times that I should.  And I might be there for times I shouldn’t.  But I have to try.  I have to try.

Tengo familia.  

“There’s a moment when I wake up each morning and I don’t remember I’m sick.  It lasts only a few seconds, but it’s like a little gift I get at the start of each day.  That night, I told my Emma.  The first time I cried about it, was when she began to cry.  I made her promise not to tell anyone — that’s for me to do.  It would be so selfish of me to tell him.  So selfish.  But when you get to be my age, you realize what matters is family.  What matters is family.” – Nunzio, Act Two, Over the River and Through the Woods 

Well, I’ve been reading about what changes I’m going to have to make in my life in order to delay the inevitable as long as possible.  The National Kidney Foundation has a great website with a ton of information, with my only gripe about the site is that some of the information is scattered about the website.  I have found so far that the two main things that I can do to help is watch my diet and exercise, but the rules governing those two items are, well, complicated.

Concerning diet, you know, it’s just wonderful finding out that the food I’ve been eating the past couple of years, while being great by any normal sense (high in whole grains and fiber, dried beans and fruit, getting a good bit of dairy, etc.), is actually, well, terrible for someone with CKD (chronic kidney disease, a term apparently used for all types of kidney failure regardless of whether or not the failure was caused by a disease (i.e. hypertension counts)).  I need to apparently avoid or significantly limit my intake of sodium, potassium, and phosphorus.  Now, the first two are easy to at least know what they are, but phosphorus?  That’s in food?  What food?  Well, it turns out that it’s in a lot of food in some count or another, but here’s a list of foods especially high in phosphorus:

• dairy products such as milk, cheese, pudding, yogurt and ice cream, and it doesn’t matter if it’s whole, skim, 2% or whatever
• dried beans and peas such as kidney beans, split peas and lentils
• all nuts and peanut butter
• beverages such as cocoa, beer and cola soft drinks
• “whole grain” and “high fiber” foods (like whole wheat bread, bran cereal and brown rice)

Here’s a list of high sodium items (the small version):

• table salt and foods with added salt such as snack foods, soups and processed cheese
• some canned foods, prepared foods and “fast foods”
• foods pickled in brine such as pickles, olives and sauerkraut
• smoked and cured foods such as ham, bacon and luncheon meats

And potassium?  Oh, this is going to be annoying:

• Oranges and orange juice
• Kiwis
• Nectarines
• Prunes and prune juice
• Raisins and dried fruit
• Bananas
• Melons (cantaloupe and honeydew)
• Potatoes (including French Fries, potato chips and sweet potatoes)
• Tomatoes and tomato sauce
• Winter squash
• Pumpkin
• Asparagus
• Avocado
• Beets
• Beet greens
• Cooked spinach
• Parsnips and rutabaga

And the exquisite beauty of it is that I need to keep on eye on some of those things because of potassium and phosphorus, for example whole wheat/whole grain items.

So what can I eat?  Well, good question, but for a simple start if it’s on the lists above I should seriously limit my intake, if not it should be OK to eat as long as I have a rough idea of how much sodium, potassium, and phosphorus is in it.  And there are other guidelines I need to follow, like that I need to get protein each day but only complete proteins (meat, fish, poultry, fresh pork, or eggs; fish being the best on that list, 3-4 servings a week recommended), several servings of grain/cereal/bread each day (but not whole grains when possible), and 2-3 servings of low potassium fruit each day.

Oh, and alcohol?  Maximum of one drink a day.  Period.  Any more than that and I need doctor’s permission.  Seriously.  If I haven’t had a drink in a while I might be able to squeeze a second drink if I’m eating a meal at the time, but those times better be special occasions, i.e. not often.  If I break that rule I risk serious consequences.

Even though the list is long and will take some getting used to, I’m sure I will eventually adapt.  The main problem right now will be just remembering what food is right and what’s wrong, especially when ordering from restaurants.  Today for lunch I completely spaced until I got home that potatoes are bad: I had ordered a side of fries with my meal.  Oh, well, I’ll figure this out eventually.

Now, concerning exercise.  That exercise is recommended is really a given.  Just about any “diet” plan includes a side of exercise.  The problem is there are rules governing exercise too:

• Your breathing should not be so hard that you cannot talk with someone exercising with you. (Try to get an exercise partner such as a family member or a friend.)
• You should feel completely normal within one hour after exercising. (If not, slow down next time.)
• You should not feel so much muscle soreness that it keeps you from exercising the next session.
• You should not do any exercise that could cause or has caused joint or bone problems.

So what does this mean for me in particular?  Well, it pretty much means that I’m going to have to stop doing Hapkido and Taekwondo.  The out of breath part, the joint and bone problems part……   ::sigh::  There goes the dream of getting a master’s belt.  I’m sure the school would be honored to have me continue to teach, but if I can’t train I will never be able to advance myself, and also I will slowly become worse as a teacher, and I can’t do that to my students.  I’ve seen what happens when instructors fail to keep up their own training; it’s a bad thing.  What exercise I’ll pick up instead remains to be seen.  I suppose a good thing that comes from this is that I’ll have more nights free, but…..   Well, I’ll adjust.

Enough “happy” thoughts for now.  I think I’ll go hold Natalie.  That usually cheers me up.  I’ll just have to remember that my father dealt with CKD.  Somehow I will too.

So, many things have happened since my last post, which was quite a while ago. I’ll hit the good thing first: I have a new daughter! She’s a beautiful little girl, weighing 6 pounds 15 ounces at birth (a bit more now) and both mom and daughter are doing fine. Health-wise, at least. If I had to say one thing about parenthood, no matter how many times I heard people tell me that babies take up a lot of your time, I didn’t really realize just how much time babies take up.

And really, it’s how the time goes that really hits you. Natalie doesn’t really fuss all the time or anything, as she sleeps quite a bit. The problem is how long she sleeps, which is really hard to tell at this stage. She could sleep for 3 minutes or 3 hours, and when she wakes no one knows what’s coming next. Is it time for a feeding, time for a changing, or perhaps Natalie’s just bored and wants to take a look around? There’s also all those things that a person normally does during the day, you know, like bathing and basic house maintenance. Whereas before my wife and I could plan what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it (or even just go out on a whim), now we find that everything revolves around Natalie. Even simple things like taking a shower can be complicated to arrange. Luckily, though, there are two of us, and one of us can take care of Natalie while the other does something else, though unfortunately since Sara is breastfeeding exclusively right now she gets the lion share of Natalie care, and also unfortunately a lot of the time that she’s taking care of Natalie I have things I have to do. Soon, though, we’ll be introducing Natalie to a bottle so I’ll be able to take care of some of the feedings. And really, though we have lost a lot of time and it takes a lot to take care of a new baby, every time I look at Natalie…..it’s just all worth it.

Now for the bad. Before I begin, I would like to say that yes, I know I’ve kept some stuff hidden from people and some of what to come will be a shock, but before a couple of days ago nothing had really been confirmed and I didn’t want to worry people unduly if nothing was wrong. I also simply reserved the right to tell who I wanted to know, and there were precious few who knew. Some people may know that I went into the doctors office last fall complaining of chest pains, and that I found out that I had high blood pressure. I was and am taking steps to keep it lowered (and I have been, it’s a lot lower than before). Now, what a lot of people don’t know is that my blood tests showed something worrisome: my creatine levels were higher than they should be. The doctor knew that my high blood pressure could affect my creatine levels, so she didn’t do anything at the time. On subsequent trips, though, my blood pressure was better but my creatine levels weren’t. For those that don’t know, creatine levels are one of the indicators of how well the kidneys function.

The doctor finally decided that she needed to send me to a specialist so that we could find out what was going on. She said that she believed that my kidneys weren’t functioning like they should, but since she wasn’t a specialist she wasn’t comfortable looking into it more, and that she could be wrong. This was back in the spring. Well, the specialist had a very booked schedule, and he is the only one in town, so there was nothing for it: I had to wait a little over three months till I could see the specialist. So sometime in mid-July I went in and talked with the specialist, who ordered a plethora of tests to be done. Beyond a couple 24 hour urine tests, I also had to go through a blood draw that pulled 7 (yes, 7) vials and 2 kidney based ultrasounds. Needless to say getting all of this done took a little bit of time, and I finally got to go back to see the doctor this past Monday.

I went in and he spoke with me. There was a lot of stuff that I don’t have, things with long names that I couldn’t remember if I tried (and he told me to not really try since I didn’t have to worry about them). But something was confirmed: I have been diagnosed with chronic kidney failure. What does it mean in a nutshell? That it isn’t a matter of if my kidneys are going to fail, but a matter of when. What he could tell me was that my kidneys are currently only operating at less than half of what they should be for a guy my age, and that they are showing signs of decline. He was also able to tell me that the cause was likely hypertension, and though usually hypertension doesn’t act that fast there is a summation that I inherited weaker kidneys from my father. Since I hadn’t gone in to see a doctor for something like 5 years, and since I didn’t show any signs of normal kidney diseases, hypertension is most likely the culprit.

What he couldn’t tell me, though, was a time frame of how long I have till they fail. Though any time frame he could give me would be rough anyway, he couldn’t give me one at all because the place I went to have my urine tests done failed to perform one of tests ordered, a test on how much protein is being spilled. Without that number he can’t say whether it will be a couple years or a couple months till my kidneys fail. So I get to go back and do that test again (I’m going somewhere else this time), and while I’m going the specialist has ordered a couple more tests to go along with it to look for the extremely rare kidney diseases (that he doesn’t think I have, but might as well check while we’re doing the tests). I’ll be doing the tests sometime in September and I get to wait till October this time to find out more.

So what does this mean for me? Well, right now I get to keep taking my blood pressure pills and taking other steps to keep my blood pressure down. Keeping my blood pressure down will help to (possibly) prolong the inevitable. Luckily I’m on a very low dose of the medicine so it can be increased if need be, though I’m doing well keeping it down as-is. But now that I’m on blood pressure meds, I probably will never be able to stop. And nothing is going to keep my kidneys from failing. How long do I really have? Well, as the specialist said, he can’t give me any kind of a time frame right now. But the pretty clear impression that I got was that while “months” may be too short of a time frame , “years” may be too long. When my father found out that his were failing, I know he had but a few years till they failed. How long till mine fail? Could be next year. Could be a few years. Might even be a couple beyond that. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up that I’ll be able to hold it off any longer than that.

Many people will probably be asking what happens after they fail? Well, there are only two options that I know of, though I’ll be researching this more, you can count on it. The first option is having a kidney transplant. These can have the highest payoff but can also be the riskiest. The payoff is having working kidneys and leading a fairly normal life, being sure to take meds so that your body doesn’t reject the new organs. Ah, but there’s the rub. Though you won’t have to do the second option, there is a serious risk that my body could reject the new kidneys, a rejection that could lead to death in a matter of minutes or even seconds. And even if my body doesn’t reject them right away, the risk of rejection climbs higher over time. And if the rejection is a violent one……

The second option is kidney dialysis. This is the option that my father chose. Though it can be called the “safer” of the two options, the affects of dialysis can be staggering. Many people only survive a few years on dialysis, though to be truthful most of the people that are in this category are already elderly when they began. Dialysis must be performed 3-4 times a week, and sessions can last from 1.5 to 3 hours. During this time the dialysis patient is hooked up to a machine which through IV-like needles which pulls blood from them and sends it back respectively. The machine, in a nutshell, performs the tasks of the kidneys artificially. While a person may delay a dialysis session by a day, any more than that endangers the person’s life. Beyond the fact that the person is tied to a machine 3-4 times a week for the rest of their lives, which by the way isn’t a pain-free experience, the process takes it’s toll on person’s body, basically “aging” them. My father was in his early to mid 60s when he died. He required two canes two move, could barely open and close his hands, needed a oxygen tank in his house, and was basically in nearly every way an old man save one: his brain stayed as sharp as ever, I’m happy to say.

Why did my father choose the route of dialysis? I can surmise the reason. It’s pretty simple when you think about it: my brother had just been born, and 18 months after that I was born. Now that I have Natalie, I can easily see why he made the choice that he did. He wanted to ensure that he would have the most possible time he could with his sons, and dialysis is technically less risky than a transplant (or at least it was at the time, I don’t know about now). I found out from my mother that there was going to be a complication concerning a transplant even if he wanted one, but I’m sure that my brother and I affected his choice, and I have a feeling that even if there wasn’t a potential complication that he would have chosen the same path. My father ended up enduring 25 or so years of pain and suffering before he died, but he succeeded in his task. He got to see his children grow up. I really wish he could be around right now, so he could have the chance to hold his granddaughter in his arms…

What route will I choose when the time comes? I’m not sure. I want to research things more before I start really deciding on anything. I lived with a person who was running on dialysis for a long time, so I can tell (at least from the outside) what that is like. But times have changed since then and I don’t know if any new information could shed a different light on the subject. ::sigh:: The gravity of the situation is a heavy one. Though probably not instant, I know my dreams for the future have been irrevocably changed. The trips to foreign countries? While not 100% dashed, my hopes for them have changed since if I’m on dialysis I would have to arrange to do that every couple of days, and I saw the complications my father went through with that even in the states. If I have a transplant, I have to wonder if I’ll live long enough. A bit of a maudlin thought, I know, but I refuse to sugar-coat the future. I’d rather face it. Living to old age and spoiling grandchildren of my own? Well, maybe the grandchildren part will come true (at least one did for my dad), but I have to face the fact that “old age” may be something that will happen to other people.

But I want it known, here and now, that just because life has chosen to deal me this hand I am not going to give up easily. So I watched my father die a slow, painful death over the course of 25 years. I will take the memory I have of him as inspiration for my own life. He has inspired me before and he’ll do it again. So I have been dealt a bum hand that says I will probably never see old age. Well, fine, I’ll learn to cherish what moments I have, for now I know life can be a fleeting thing. And though the complete song doesn’t match the situation, there are definitely parts of My Chemical Romance’s “Famous Last Words” that resonates with me:

I am not afraid to keep on living,
I am not afraid to walk this world alone
Honey if you stay I’ll be forgiven,
Nothing you can say can stop me going home.

I will do whatever I can to keep being able to go home to Sara and Natalie.

Whatever I can.