1. Adrenaline shot through my system around 5:00 this morning as I leapt out of bed in anticipation of driving today with Ed as passenger to the Wildhorse Resort near Pendleton, OR. Since the kidney transplant in May, most of my travels have been between Kellogg and Spokane, but I did take one trip to Trout Creek, MT.
I picked up Ed around 6:30 and we blasted over the 4th of July Pass on into CdA for a filling and delicious breakfast at the Breakfast Nook. We made a couple of rest stops and stopped at Starbucks in Ritzville for lattes. It was an easy, uneventful drive and our check in at Wildhorse went beautifully.
2. I spent some time on the gaming floor, protecting myself by wearing a mask, playing machines where no or few people were around, and by wearing disposable latex gloves. My luck was mixed. After a fairly lucky start, my luck started going downhill, so I returned to my room.
I had some medical matters to straighten out and exchanged messages with Nurse Jenn. Everything is in order, is clear in my head, and I'm ready to return to Sacred Heart on Tuesday for labs and an ultrasound.
3. Every time I travel to the Wildhorse Resort, I meet up with Colette Marie for dinner in Pendleton. We've been friends for forty-two years now, ever since the fall term 1982 Shakespeare course I taught at Whitworth.
We once again met for delicious Thai food at Thai Crystal (I loved my Spicy Noodles with tofu) and we plunged right away into deep conversational waters.
First topic: organ transplants. Colette's brother, Kent Klingman, has survived a complicated and experimental stem cell transplant for over twenty-five years and Colette told me stories about the transplant itself and what's happened in the years since, including when he met and became close friends with Mathias, his donor from Germany, in 2006.
In addition, Colette's first husband's brother lives on as a heart transplant recipient. Colette and I had a fascinating discussion about how both Kent and her one time brother-in-law, Stuart, have been altered by their transplants. Kent, for example, now has food allergies he didn't have before, ones that Mathias has always had. Remarkably, Stuart's heart transplant seems to have altered his personality. It's as if along with his donor's physical heart, he also received some of her admirable personality traits.
I'll say, as a footnote to Colette's stories, that the only thing I'm aware of having received, in addition to my donor's kidney, is the BK virus and it is being treated and is barely detectable now, if at all.
Second topic: Colette has read some of the books I've read as I make my way through Leah Sottile's book list. She's also worked with one of the writers, Sharma Shields (especially via Fishtrap) and she's heard Leyna Krow read and present. We had a great conversation about women writers and also talked invigoratingly about the book, All the Light We Cannot See.
Colette has been working on a novel that she tells from five characters' points of view. We had a great conversation, then, about how much we enjoy books that not only have multiple narrators, but that jump around in time.
I had been looking forward to this conversation, especially since I started reading Leah Sottile's list of books.
Our time together was just the stimulating, even electrifying, time of talking and sharing insights and ideas that I'd hoped it would be.
BRAVO!
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