So...

After I posted "Four Months" Thursday evening, I was unusually tired, so I headed to bed rather early for me. My legs were achy, which I attributed to the results of previous exertion. I also felt a bit chilly, but thought that was because the A/C was running at the moment. I took my temp as I normally do, and it was elevated a degree or so from my normal readings.

After sleeping about 2 1/2 hours, I woke up feeling miserable. I was chilling, and my legs ached to the bone. My temp was up another two degrees. I took some Tylenol, which calmed things down for several hours, but by 9 a.m. the symptoms had returned. I took some more Tylenol, and Nancy called the transplant team. The doctor was out of town, and after some other inquiries, we ended up going to the ER.

They did several tests over the next three hours. Good news: everything was ok with the kidney. More good news: no evidence of infection. Initial conclusion: some sort of viral illness. They sent me home with instructions to contact my doctor if things got worse.

The symptoms did start to return that evening, so I took some Tylenol then and again during the night. Since then the symptoms seem to have passed.

I share all this for two reasons. The simple one is to provide an update on my status. The complex one is that this incident is a near at hand example of the nature of my recovery, at least so far. I plan to go into this in more detail in a subsequent post, but for now I'll say that this has been a learning experience for me. Sometimes understandable, sometimes confusing, sometimes difficult, and almost never linear. None of that is to imply anything bad, only that it has been and continues to be a learning and growing experience, one which I willingly embrace (although not without some grumbling and disconcertion at times).