So... yeah... a blog! I have no idea what I'm doing and I only half know why. This has been a long time in coming and I admit that I'm a procrastinator, but there's no time like the present I suppose. For that reason, we're starting kinda in the middle of the story I'm trying to get down, although I've been writing it for a while without sharing it. So I'll give you a brief history. As many of you know (and many more of you probably don't), four years ago we discovered I was born with a rare condition called renal diverticulitis. Much like the more common intestinal diverticulitis where the intestines are riddled with sac-like aneurysms, my right kidney forms pockets that balloon out and fill with fluid, creating a breeding ground for kidney stones and infections and causing intense pain. And if you want to pick an embarrassing condition, having a problem with the urinary system is a great one... believe me. I was in cardiovascular school in an echo night lab being scanned by my lab partner when she saw a huge black spot right under my liver. At first it was labeled as a simple kidney cyst and I was told if I'm not symptomatic then I shouldn't worry about it. Six months later, I was in the worst pain of my life and couldn't even stand up long enough to walk from one end of a small room to the other, much less scrub into procedures at work while wearing a 20 lb x-ray protection suit. It was interfering with life... and I wasn't okay with that. Turns out the "cyst" had grown two centimeters in that short time, which in the world of medicine is pretty significant. It was taking up half of my right kidney. The problem with me was that while %2-4 of people have renal diverticulitis, the placement of my aneurysm, or "diverticulum", was very difficult and never really seen before. Instead of forming on the top free wall of my kidney as is common, mine was down in the core of my kidney's calyces making it extremely difficult to visualize on any kind of imaging. God connected me with an amazing urologist, Dr. Vincent Bird at UF and Shands who performed the common cure surgery for this type of condition on me. That was two years ago this past September. I was in and out of the hospital countless times and had a JP drain, a nephrostomy tube, and a foley catheter for nearly three months. Remember what I said about embarrassing? Yeah... my best friends and family were emptying my drains, bathing me, and dressing me. I've peed in a cup more times than I can count and have been exposed to people I don't know more than anyone ever should have to be. I've taken more narcotics than any 23 year-old should know exist and I have experienced losing my mind... literally. But God brought me out. And even as I laid in that hospital bed, unsure of the difference between reality and hallucination, there was one thing I always felt like a distant dream echoing from the deepest corners of my mind: God is good. Somewhere in me, I knew He was still there and slowly I watched Him bring me out of the desert into a paradise. I still shiver when I think about the pain I went through, but I don't blame God for anything. He saw my ugliness - all that dirt and grime - and out of furious mercy, He planted a garden in it. There are things in place in my life right now that would never have been if not for that. God didn't cause the tears, but He did fill his pen with them and write something beautiful. During that time, my grandmother had given me the small journal you see in this background picture to chronicle my healing. Doing that, I learned that healing is not linear. Some days you feel great and the next day you feel like complete trash. But over time, you see yourself heading upwards. I would go back and read old entries and discover that I was doing things I couldn't do a few weeks earlier. It was very helpful in letting me see how every day was one step closer to being better. Eventually I stopped writing all together, because I thought I had no need for it. But it seems that now, two years later... the pen is filling again. Not to say that GOD doesn't write every day even when I don't, but for some reason blood, sweat, and tears make for unmistakably stunning ink. The common surgery wasn't a complete success due to the very unusual nature of my particular condition. I am looking at a partial nephrectomy (removing half of my right kidney) in June. Facing this again has sent me to writing and seeking encouragement in those old entries once more. If you have any kind of kidney disease, or if you're going through a struggle, or even if you aren't either of those but you are just curious about what I've been through, I've decided that I will put all these entries up for you in the hopes that they may help you while you chase whatever healing you are chasing. And if you aren't chasing, then maybe you should start. These are for you. These are the songs I write by a closed window when it's raining, the words I jot down in my phone or type up on my desktop at work so I don't forget them, my sighs and head shakes, my quiet brooding. This is what's going on in my head. Unfiltered. I refuse to let myself edit this stuff to make it "Facebook worthy". This is everything I write when I think no one but God is listening. Maybe to someone, the frustrated, contemplative, unsure, tired, mundane, and consequently miraculously inspired me will speak louder than the strong, smiling, confident, busy, and consequently grossly misunderstood me. Here you go. Do with them what you will.
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