its been too long

Before I even begin with my story I need to apologise for neglecting this venue, I wont make allot of excuses but I did recently spend a week puking among other things. Anyway I do have a story to tell but in order to do that I need to tell you the back story, at least a short version of. Well here goes folks, when I was ten months old I was diagnosed with a real rare blood disease, so rare in fact one in every several million get it. But as it happened there were two other kids about my age that got it at almost the exact same time, and I live in a small to medium size town at best so yeah you do those numbers like I did, it doesn't add up does it, impossible isn't it. Yeah thats what I got too.But as the story continues the boy did not make it, he died and the girl went deaf, so I guess you could say that i was the lucky one. As I grew up my kidneys stayed very small, so by the time I was eight I was so sick that My family took me to Herman hospital in Houston which in time became a second home to me. Not long after I got there I had to begin hemo dialysis and did that for several months when finally it was discovered that my father was a possible donor and not long after that I had my first kidney transplant from my father.After that I had several good years but quite a few rejections and then it did completely fail and they had to take it out. I wont bore you with everything leading up to present day but I will say lots of small surgeries and two or three big ones, bottom line pain and lots of it. I told you all that group in order to tell you this. I am presently on peritoneal dialysis and I like it much better than hemo dialysis (no needles) even on peritoneal you have to be careful because if you are not exceptionally clean and hook up correctly you can get peritonitis, I have had this four times and it really feels like someone is kicking you in the stomach as hard as they can over and over again. I have heard that people have died just having this stuff once so I figure all in all if you wanted to put it in cat terms I have spent seven lives, so I guess it is time to start being real careful. Now for the good part of the story kiddies.I have to order my dialysis solution every two weeks from a company called Baxter and I have been doing this for quite some time now, and I speak to the same person every time I call in.Her name is Nicole and I don't go overboard by saying that on the phone she is the sweetest most efficient person you could ever want to talk to on a business call.Well as an added bonus the guy that delivers my supplies every time MIke ( Mike is a stocky fellow with a big goatee and he shaves his head razor smooth, bottom line he looks like the type of guy you would not want to piss off in a dark ally but the truth is he is one of the nicest most friendly guys you could ever hope to meet.) told me that in a few weeks Baxter was going to be sending some of the employees out to meet the patients and the nursing staff. So the company flew Nicole from Chicago to here and she was going to meet a few of us patients, well that day my best friend Darrel happened to be here and there was a knock on the door and inn walks Mike sans delivery.And he said Joe I have a surprise for ya buddy and in walked Nicole, I was so happy to meet her after speaking to her for so often so long. I introduced Darrel to everyone and it was wonderful because Nicole seemed so at ease and just very comfortable, we talked about all kinds of stuff it even turned out she was into tattoos, she has a wonderful Celtic piece on her lower back. So of course I had to show her the majority of mine, because as we all know body art is right down Joes ally. Then my friend Darrel had a great idea, people sign my wall and he said since she is a friend I should have her sign the wall and I could not agree more so she did and that was cool and as an added bonus Mike took a picture of us that with any luck she will mail me a copy of. When all was said and done and the smoke had cleared Darrel said you know Joe that is amazing, companies just don't do cool things like that, something like that helps restore my faith in humanity.The only thing I could say was me too buddy, me too.

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