Tomorrow is my daughter’s birthday. She turns 17.
On the 16th of this month, was my birthday. As I reflect on how I want my children to know we appreciate their lives..and on how I need to find cake, I thought of what my husband said on my birthday this year, given my mother no longer is alive.
“Well, at least I don’t have to worry about how she hasn’t wished you a happy birthday this year!”
Ouch! But it made me laugh out loud! True. Dead men tell no tales. Nor do they continue to make us feel less than. I didn’t realise what it meant for him over the years to get home from work, or be home with me and at the end of the day, ask me, “So, who phoned or texted to wish you a happy birthday?”
And have me reply, “Well, so and so did.”
Him, “Not your mom?
Me, “Man, I’d roll over and die of shock if she DID!”
I didn’t know it hurt him on my behalf till this year. It never registered. And I feel sad for HIM. His mother still wishes him a happy birthday and she has FIVE children. I am my mother’s first and she stopped probably a decade ago if not more. Probably around the time she accepted that I had adopted my children for life and was going to educate all my children myself.
Ouch.
But if I was in jail, and happened to steal from my job, she’d have visited me and wished me a happy birthday, happy anniversary and fair Sunday visit.
Believe me, I am sure of that. I just can’t tell you how.
So, I prepare to celebrate my daughter. To encourage her to follow God all her life. To implore her to live right and give us genuine reason not only to be grateful she was born, but to be happy she lives-by living a life of grace and kindness. That’s all I want.
And yes, if she landed up in jail, I’d visit her. But I’d be ‘upset’ about that and not if she adopted and remained a homeschool mom.
PS. I am scared. I had blood tests to check baseline numbers before my rheumatologist moves me onto a weekly biologic injection. And I saw that my kidney function is suddenly at stage 2 kidney disease. They say online not too see a nephrologist till stage 3. And I thought maybe it was due to the pain meds I started in December last year.
But then I went back to old blood results and found a few other kidney numbers and my function has been declining all along. Not only that, my creatinine (in rough terms -how much junk my kidneys are NOT able to filter out my blood) has been steadily increasing. 61, 64 and now 81. After 89, alarm bells start ringing in the medical field.
Given this is a trend and not just one set of bad numbers out of normal ones, I’ve decided to see a kidney guy next week.
Also, my right lung either has so much infection that it’s clogged up fully and has no space for air, or it has collapsed. I’m on antibiotics-sound familiar???-and must go back to the GP on Friday even if I feel better. My cough sounds like the cough of someone with COPD. A chronic lung disease.
I can’t explain the dismay I felt. She had been listening through the stethoscope over my vest (vest in South African, not American. The light underwear you wear when it’s cold.) But when she heard nothing, she got rid of it and my bra. And still-nothing. Seeing a worried doctor is not fun.
But I must say this. I’m thankful to a friend in Kenya. Last time, my friend’s daughter asked me, “Mum, why do you sound like you’ve been running? You know you’re meant to be resting after your op. Why do you sound too busy? You can’t even breathe!” But I did not do anything about it. I didn’t HEAR it. I was just walking. I shouldn’t have sounded so bad. I think though, I thought my body was reacting to the pain. Only when things got so bad that I couldn’t sleep for a few nights, did I see a doctor. and the doctor was angry at me for “waiting so long” to be seen.
This time, I was telling my friend via WhatsApp voice note on Friday, that I thought I had a chest infection as the symptoms were all piling up as usual, and when she wrote, “I can hear the lack of breath” I took it seriously this time. I saw the doctor on Monday. And I’m glad I did.
I return to the GP on Friday. Maybe for chest x-rays if things aren’t bad. I see pulmonologist on Monday who will do lung function tests as I need to figure out WHY it gets this bad. I see the rheumatologist on Thursday morning next week, who I hope will be able to start me on treatment as I had such a bad attack that despite oral and pain patches, I almost went to Emergency for the pain. And then that afternoon, I meet the neurologist who I assume will be aiming to keep an eye on my failing kidney (s). I had small cysts on both kidney and liver in 2020. Did they grow? Do I have Polycystic Kidney Disease? Is it AS related?
Can we halt the decline?
I hope so.
They said I should write a book 