Quick Update

Two changes to my routine:

1) My dry weight has been increased yet again to 100 kilos (220 pounds).  Me big boy again!!  Knock wood, there's no end in sight for my weight gain.  As long as it isn't fat or water, I will go along happily.

2) I've changed shifts from 3rd to 2nd, which means that I show up for dialysis at around 11:30AM and am on the way home around 4PM or so.  Schedule-wise, the change is much more in my wheelhouse because I'm up at the crack of dawn most mornings.  The only downside so far is that I have to commute home during the rush, and that is no picnic.  I was quickly reminded of man's inhumanity to man on the Blue Line in particular, but during the entire trip home in general.  Noo Yawkers have nothing on Washingtonians when it comes to lack of common courtesy.

That's it!  Well, I could write more but I don't want to.  It involves blood, and the blood ain't mine.

A Dietary Winner: Authentic Texas Chili

My diet presents a daily challenge.  Due to my kidney failure, there are a host of food products that I cannot eat or have to watch my consumption of like a hawk.  Some that come readily to mind are junk food, dairy products, tomatoes, potatoes, cheese, and bacon.  Oh, and don’t forget chocolate!  This means that I can almost never eat on a whim, and that I have had to give up a slew of foods that I love.  These include pizza, french fries, meat sauce/marinara sauce, ice cream, M & M’s, and double cheeseburgers slathered in ketchup.  It’s a tough road to hoe, but I do the best that I can day after day.  Every once in a while I slip up, but the monthly report I receive from my nutritionist slaps me back into reality.

One of my big no-no foods is lasagna.  This presents a problem because I make a damn fine four-cheese sausage-and-chopped-meat two-pan lasagna, and I absolutely refuse to compromise on the ingredients.  For my money, there’s only one way to make lasagna:  the right way!  So I only make it about twice a year, doctor’s orders be damned, and I eat it like it’s my last meal.

Chili presents a different issue.  Chili is to me more of an everyday food, and I eat it a lot more often.  It’s comfort food goodness that is great over rice, hot dogs, or nachos, or all by itself.  Problem is, the way I make it contains tomatoes and beans – two foods that are explicitly forbidden from my diet.  And I have insane chili cravings every now and again.  Until recently, I dealt with this dilemma sort of like I dealt with the lasagna issue – by damning the food gods.  Bad idea.  I eat chili a lot more often than I eat lasagna, so “just doing it” is not a good solution.

I then remembered from a cooking show – most likely one of those excellent chili cooking contests – that “authentic” Texas chili does not contain beans.  Tomatoes?  I wasn’t so sure.  A quick bit of Internet research provided a most agreeable answer:  authentic Texas chili contains only beef, onions, chili peppers or chili powder, salt and a little animal fat (like lard or bacon grease).  Touchdown!  All the ingredients are part of my already-truncated food list.

Once I tried cooking authentic Texas chili, I was even happier, because it is one of the simplest recipes known to man.  Making a good burger from scratch is more difficult.  You simply render the fat, brown the beef, add the onions, add garlic (optional), and add chilies, chili powder or a combination thereof.  Simmer and stir on very low heat for two to eight hours (depending on how much time you have) while adding salt and pepper to taste, and you’re done!  You’ve brought an inexpensive, healthy, stick-to-your-ribs batch of chili into the world.  And any chili aficionado will tell you that this is only the tip of the iceberg.  Authentic Texas chili can be the starting point for a multitude of variations on the original recipe; the only limitations are common sense and, in my case, diet.  A cook can also take the opposite tack and work on refining the original recipe – a little more heat, a little less onion, a little more liquid, a different cut of beef -- until it comes out just as they like it.

I look forward to spending many hours refining my own authentic Texas chili recipe and sharing the results with friends and family – and my readers, too!

Bad Flashback

Bad Flashback

I’m sitting here in “the chair” closest to the dialysis center patient entrance/exit.  It’s 3:40PM; I’m almost a half-hour into the 4.25-hour session.  As James Brown (a former St. Albans resident, by the way) would say from time to time:  “I Feel Goooood!”  I’m accepting the changes that come my way, and sticking with the program when things get “slow.”  Just chatted with the medical staff who agree that all my numbers are looking good.  Dr. Patel even suggested that I contact the National Kidney Foundation about having them sponsor my athletic quests – if I’m serious, that is (and I am!).  I even applied for two more jobs - - this time, government admin (non-IT).  In short, all systems go.

Then I remember:  this is the chair/location I was in when I had The Nosebleed Session.

I had suffered from a lingering nosebleed all weekend long.  The problem wasn’t that it got worse; the problem was that it wouldn’t stop.  I’d gotten used to having nosebleeds from time to time because they would eventually stop.  Not this one.  It just kept leaking through the weekend.  When I looked at myself in the mirro on Monday morning, I knew that something was wrong.  My nose was mostly red and starting to swell a little.  My wife and I discussed whether I should just go straight to the hospital instead of going to dialysis that afternoon.

This is a tough story to write.  But it falls within my three rules, so I am going to try to finish it.

[Author’s note:  Odd coincidence:  the dialysis machine alarm, which indicates that a nurse/technician should check the machine “just in case”, did not go off once during this entire session.  This has only happened once or twice before in the 19 months I have been doing dialysis.]

[5/27/11:  I still don’t feel like finishing this.]

[6/2/11:  This subject is too depressing to write about.]