Great Annual Check-Up for my Son!

I'm sorry if it seems like I was MIA this week, my 8 year old son had his annual follow-up appointment with the "big guns" at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (Stanford) for the kidney transplant he received 5 years ago.

Results?  He is doing GREAT!  We won't have the results of the DSA lab (Donor Specific Antigen) for a couple of weeks, so provided those are A-OK we will be really flying high with thankfulness and elation.

So I type this as I sit on a bed in a hotel room in Mountain View.  We spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday touring around our old stomping grounds when we were residents of the Ronald McDonald House for 8 months in 2008.  We took the ferry from the Ferry Building to Sausalito, bought a couple of Tin Tin comic books at the store in Sausalito that carries ALL of them, we spent some time at the Ferry Building, and the day before we went to Half Moon Bay and Pacifica.  We have really packed it in these last few days, but it didn't give me much of an opportunity to blog!

So here I am.

This week has been chock full of emotions.  Coming back here where the miracle of his transplant occurred, where hope was reborn and we dared to dream that he would live to grow into a fine young man.  We are living that dream.

I feel like I have been given a new lease on my OWN life also.  I dared to dream that I could be an active and vibrant Mom, the best "Me" I could be.  And I took steps to make that happen.  I didn't sit back and "let" it happen, any more then my husband and I "sat back" and "let" my son's kidney transplant "happen".  We relocated our entire family for 8 months.  We did the research as to which protocol was going to be the best for our son.  We chose the "steroid free" protocol, and Stanford Docs pioneered that protocol very successfully 13 years ago, so we chose them.  Julian has never been on steroids and will not have the long term effects of prolonged steroid use on his little body. 

We changed our entire life for our little man.  My husband commuted every weekend from Colorado to San Jose by air.  We made it happen.  We did go into massive debt.  Thankfully we have been able to work our way out of that over the last 5 years, and "debt free" (except for our house) is actually on our horizon within the next 18 months or so! 

We made choices that our "wants" or "preferences" did not matter, that we would do what it took to make it happen. 

And that is how I have approached my health these last 2 1/2 years.  It is an absolute priority for me to remain healthy.  It is part of who I am, part of who I have committed to be for my son's sake. 

When I am NOT working on my health, I become a very selfish person.  Honestly.  That is the truth.  It is what I have discovered after looking back on years and years of abusing my health and abusing my body with morbid obesity.

When I am NOT working on my health, my day is oriented around when and what I can eat next.  Planning what yummy things I can get my hands on throughout the day.  Then eating it, then feeling yucky and being lethargic on the couch for the rest of the day.  What kind of life is that?  What kind of Mom am I if that is the sole priority of my existence?  Honestly?  Food?  Yummies?  I lament at how much of my life I have "lost" serving at the altar of yummy food.

I made a command decision to NOT lose any more of MY life to the yummy food.  I made a command decision that I will make myself LESS emotionally available to my family because I was FULLY emotionally available to yummy food.  Nope.  That is not my life.  My life is so much more than that.

So I encourage any of you who are reading this, who are at the beginning of this amazing process of transformation, you CAN do this.  But only YOU can do this! 

1 packet at a time.  1 day at a time.

Rinse and Repeat!