1. My kidney function had dropped to 14% back in September. When kidney function falls below 15%, it's in the Stage V range and this can be when a kidney patient starts on dialysis. But, because I'm still feeling good and because my nephrologist wasn't convinced my function was going to stay at this lower level, I didn't start dialysis. I had blood work done again in late October as part of the process to (hopefully) be listed at Sacred Heart for a transplant and my function was back up to 18%, a number that would dismay most people, but, the improvement made me so happy I nearly cried.
Today, the results of last week's blood work came floating into my email inbox and I've held steady. My function was at 17%. Right now, this is just about what I hoped for. I'm feeling good. I didn't stay in the Stage V range and, for now, I'm not having to get things set up for dialysis and have my life centered around having a machine filter my blood regularly.
On December 12th, I see my nephrologist, Dr. Jones, and I'm looking forward to what she has to say about how she reads the blood (and urine) test results.
2. Today I watched Selma, the 2014 movie that tells the story of the three attempts civil rights advocates made in March of 1965 to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in support of voting rights for black Americans. I experienced again how, when I was only an elementary school kid, I came to see these civil rights workers and marchers as on the right side of history. Back then, I used to pore over the depictions of the civil rights movement presented in Life magazine and I couldn't understand the harsh things I heard adults in my life say about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement nor could I understand adults I heard support Governor George Wallace and others who opposed civil rights on the grounds that they wanted to keep things they way they were.
I experienced the power of this movie from a distance, as an observer, as one who lived far away from where these events occurred. But, the movie moved me in a personal way, too, as I found myself taking stock of my earliest impressions of the civil rights movement and of how what I felt and experienced within myself over the next fifty years or so was often in contrast to members of our extended family, family friends in Kellogg, my Boy Scout leaders, and friends I hung out with. At an early age, I began to realize how people who are devoted to service to others -- teachers, police officers, coaches, supervisors at work, volunteers for organizations like the Boy Scouts -- and people who are devoted to church, the love and care of their families, and to their friends, that is, people who are capable of great acts of generosity and goodwill, can also articulate heartless and cruel and distorted observations and assessments when it comes to the lives of African Americans and other people who aren't white. I've never lost my admiration for all that is good about the people I am remembering and who I know today, but will always be perplexed by this contradiction I have experienced. (By the way, I'm also perplexed by my own contradictions. I don't see myself as in the clear when it comes to contradictory behavior.)
Along with sending me down my own memory lane and moving me to think about my own life in relation to the history of racial relations in the USA, the movie also reminded me of how much I admire Oprah Winfrey's acting. I don't know which movie I saw first back in 1985-86, Native Son or The Color Purple, but I do remember coming away from both of those movies deeply impressed with Oprah Winfrey's work. Years later, I saw her in Beloved and I wished she would play more roles. Now, I understand that Oprah Winfrey was very busy with a million other non-acting projects, but I think she brings gravity, depth, and deep feeling to the roles I've seen her play and this was certainly the case in Selma. She plays the part of Annie Lee Cooper, a small role to huge effect. When Annie Lee Cooper is denied voter registration because she cannot recite the names of the sixty-seven county judges of Alabama for the Dallas county elections registrar, she becomes the weary, but determined face of the efforts to reverse this kind of intimidation and injustice.
3. I had fun later in the day experimenting with roasting a chicken. I slid butter underneath the skin of the chicken along with a couple of thin slices of lemon. I cut the rest of the lemon into small chunks and put them in the chicken's cavity. I roasted the chicken on top of slices of onions and a very tasty liquid formed underneath the bird which I will turn into a gravy or a sauce to put over rice and chicken tomorrow. I thought the way I roasted this chicken and the way I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and Old Bay seasoning worked well. Because I'm cutting back on eating meat, I won't be roasting another chicken for a while, but I had a blast doing it late this afternoon.
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