Hemodialysis

TRANSPLANT LISTS

When I finish my breakfast — I head north to Paradise and Oroville.

I visit Paradise for the reminder. My friends and family did not lose anything to the Camp Fire, but a friend in Napa lost everything but her husband and two cats to the Glass Fire. The fire burned through the area so fast that it simply ‘trimmed the flora’ and the hills are nicer than before the fire. More sunlight. More rattlesnakes. Very pleasant if you have the money and insurance to build back your home. But those less well-off became homeless.

Next I venture over to Oroville and a tavern up by the dam. The parking lot is full of high-torque pickup trucks… and a camouflaged, all-terrain, golf cart.

This is a different type of town from where I had coffee this morning, but there are similarities in religiosity, isolation, and xenophobia. The believers and beliefs have just diverged.

I sit in the back corner booth viewing the whole restaurant and making sure I am visible. “A few months” meanders through my mind.

“What would you like today?” the server asks me.

“The Usual” I say with a smile.

“Sorry, I don’t know what that is” she says looking slightly annoyed.

“I am hoping you will in time” I return with a bigger smile. “I would like an avocado and bacon hamburger. Medium rare” .

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An eyebrow is raised, but they simply continue: “What would you like to drink?”

“A ginger ale would be great… if you have it. Otherwise maybe a Coke or Pepsi”

“Coke it is”

I don’t normally eat anything medium rare. But I am out of town and can take off a little bit of my mask if I am careful. Buying a round of beers would probably help to ingratiate me with the town, but that is a bit too conspicuous. It is very unlikely anyone will oversee the way my meat is cooked… although I should change it before it does become “the usual” .

“Do you know who you are?” — “I am Mark Fussell”

“What day is it?”

“I don’t know… I think it is in April”

“Who is the president?”

“Me! No… just kidding. I believe Biden is president, although I may have missed something interesting while I was ‘ away ’ “

“Where are you?”

“I believe I am in Stanford Hospital. Apparently in an ICU”

“And why are you here?”

“I think I was going to die. I was getting weaker and weaker for weeks, and finally my family drove me here. I thought I had a room

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in ‘M5’ but I don’t seem to be there anymore. “

“Very good. You seem to be mentally recovering well”

“So I am not going to die?”

The medium rare hamburger — was great!

Any bacteria present wandered into the dark, cold, and perilous biome that is my body. A nightmare alley for both friend and foe.

Over the next two hours I chatted with several people, sometimes in a group. We discussed the water level of the dam. Future weather. Forest fires. Covid vaccinations. Social dissent.

Obviously these are getting to meaty topics, and coming from one of the wealthiest and highest-vaccination-rate counties of the US, this could go sideways very quickly. But I admit I haven ’t been vaccinated… I don’t believe masks help me or prevent me from infecting others… and I have had disagreements with the US government. All of these are true statements, but are likely interpreted differently than the details and my real beliefs would support. I also intentionally don’t mention exactly where I live. That plus my bright yellow worker’s jacket seems to help me break through a few layers of the onion that is growing here and inch a little closer to the heart of the rebellion.

With that seed planted, I head back home to the black hole that keeps me alive.

The machines and tubes — make more sense to me now. I have a feeding and drug-injection tube. This appears to go all the way down to my stomach or intestines. Nurses play with that a few

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times a day to give me drugs, and the feeding tube is pumping almost continuously. I also have a trialysis catheter inserted into my neck, which enables something called dialysis along with other things. Apparently dialysis is replacing my kidneys… which have decided not to work anymore. I also have tubes for things to ‘leave’, but very little seems to be moving through them. I want to go to the bathroom, but apparently that is not an option. Would ‘unwiring’ me be too difficult?

Nurses (all RNs) come day and night to fiddle with me and the machines. I rarely sleep, and just keep watching the spinning clock. Shifts change and new nurses come in. Each new shift fiddles with me and the machines, as if this whole system is a very interesting thing to study and play with. I am apparently a great case study for something.

Sometimes the nurses attach vials to my neck catheter, which feels a lot like they are sucking my blood. I can’t see how they do it: just the resulting test tube filled with strangely colored blood. It seems darker then I remember blood being. Maybe it is just dark in the room?

It is about 5 o’clock — when I return to Palo Alto. During the ride back, I did two addiction-recovery meetings by Zoom. I currently need to do four or five of these a week to stay on the ‘Liver Transplant’ list. As part of getting onto this queue for a replacement liver (mine decided to stop functioning along with those negligent kidneys), I signed a contract with Stanford that required a large number of things.

First… I am not allowed on roofs. Well… that isn’t actually first, but it is true. First, I agreed to do anything and everything a doctor tells me. Don’t drink (“check… actually wasn’t drinking long before visiting Stanford ER”); don’t climb on roofs (“check”); don’t drink too many or too few liquids (“check”); don’t eat sushi, rare-ish meat,

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