1. I had an appointment with my kidney doctor today.
I had planned to walk the entire distance to the clinic this morning, but I had a few harmless holdups as I tried to leave the house, so I drove to the Trail of the CdAs, parked across from The Bean, and walked to the clinic from there.
My appointment with Dr. Bieber went just as I had thought it would after I read my lab work results last week. Not only did my numbers show that my kidneys are diseased, but stable, but we saw some improved performance since my last blood work in January. My blood pressure, however, read higher than usual today and I'll keep an eye on that and I have some slight swelling from edema in my lower legs that I also need to monitor.
I will return for more blood work and an appointment in August. My hope is that with the better weather and my increased activity that my kidneys will continue to function as well as they can as I live as well as I can with this disease.
2. I bought some chicken tenders at the store today and fixed a chicken, onion, broccoli, jasmine rice bowl with soy sauce for dinner, a simple and deliciously satisfying dinner. My new external cd/dvd drive for my computer arrived today and, while I cooked and ate, I played a favorite double cd entitled, Dear Jerry: Celebrating the Music of Jerry Garcia, a live concert given in May of 2015 in Columbia, MD (under a half an hour from where I lived at the time in Greenbelt). It features former members of The Grateful Dead along with other groups, like moe., OAR, Trampled By Turtles, Widespread Panic, Peter Frampton, and others. I love hearing familiar Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead tunes reimagined and performed freshly by all these artists.
3. This evening I returned to the Criterion Channel which features a collection of early work by Martin Scorsese under the title of Scorsese Shorts. Tonight I watched his 50 minute long documentary, Italianamerican (1974). In it, Scorsese interviews his mother (Catherine) and father (Charles) in their New York apartment. It's fascinating. They tell stories of how their families came to America, about immigrant life on Orchard St on Lower East Side Manhattan, reflect on their own trip to Italy, and, as a bonus, Catherine Scorsese makes pasta sauce. The sauce bubbles away during the interview until they leave the living room and all gather around the kitchen table and the interview continues over dinner. When the credits roll, so does Catherine Scorsese's pasta sauce recipe. I loved the intimacy of this movie and how beautifully Scorsese drew out his parents' candor and their love of their Italian heritage.
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