I'd mentioned at least once on here that I was planning to donate a kidney to my partner, the operation to take place at some time this year, probably between September and November. I received a call Friday morning from the clinic tasked with the matter, telling me that my height to weight index makes me unqualified for donating. This after I've been told already that my health is fine, as I have no affecting issues and it's perfectly likely that my one kidney is very unlikely to experience issues related to diabetes or any such difficulty.
Essentially, the clinic feels I would be a good candidate ... if I could bring my weight down to 195 lbs. I'm at 245 now, so that's a total of one fifth my present weight. Moreover, I haven't been below 200 lbs. since I was 22 or 23, and just now I'm nearly 60. In September of 2020, during Covid, I managed to bring my weight down to 228, through stretching and walking. After my 19-day vacation last year, I found myself at 238, following the moving around of luggage and the walking I did. These give me reason to expect that if I bear down, it's possible to reach the number the clinic wants.
Not going to be easy, and I don't expect to do it with stretching. Tamara and I bought a treadmill last year, so that's one thing going for me. It's already seen lots of use, but right off it's obvious that I need to double the time I spend on it, and then some. I usually walk around 2.7 mph for half an hour; I'm already at it, though it's just been three days ... slowing down the speed and walking for twice as long, with a bit of incline.
Beyond that, I need to scare up a trainer for tips on how to proceed. I'm sure swimming should be involved, though I haven't swum laps since about 2010. I can still swim, obviously, but it'll take time to build up the wherewithal to do that for even fifteen minutes. So long as I tighten up elsewhere, however, I'm sure I can build up those muscles I need to pull strokes.
My healthcare gives me access to a nutritionist as well, which I'll take advantage of. Tamara has been on a salt-free, low-sugar diet due to her combined diabetes II and kidney problems for about 18 months now, which has also brought down my sugar and salt intake as well. To keep up her strength, she's encouraged to increase her fat intake (though not over much), while watching her sugar numbers and maintaining her blood pressure. All these things have become part of my own habits, but I see that I'm going to have to cut down on my own fat and make a lot of her foods without partaking myself. I'm used to that. I worked as a cook for many years, making food for other people that I didn't eat myself.
So, walking, stretching, swimming, what the trainer tells me, what the nutritionist tells me ... and any other general exercise I can build myself up to doing. I'm not under a heavy time constraint. Tamara's next move is onto dialysis, which we'd hoped to avoid entirely, because it hasn't come to that. She's just hanging onto this side of maintaining her kidney function, which she hopes to go on doing. Her doctor hasn't stated any specific time for when that will happen. So I have a number of months ahead of me to find my stride and train for the operation, which hopefully could still take place this year. If I can convince the clinic that I'm on my way, given six months or so of working out, then we're going to be fine.
It's not actually a problem to be solved. It's a matter of doing it, which I'm able to do. I realise that this post would have been better written in two months, after I'd made considerable steps towards getting there; and I realise that a lot of people make promises to themselves that they don't keep. But they're not me. I know how to take up a task and do it day in and day out until it's done. I'm just beyond page 100 of the Streetvendor's Guide, which has been one year less 13 days since I started it on February 3rd last year. Exercising takes a lot less thinking. Yes, it's dull, but there are ways around that — and it took me just five minutes of pondering and reviewing my love for Tamara to decide there is no other option. If not my kidney, she's going to wait for 3-5 years for one; and I can't bear the thought of her sitting in a chair waiting while a machine cleans her blood. The pain of that in my thoughts is too awful to bear. I'd rather be bored, and sore, and perhaps unable to sleep at night.
The clinic told me that it has to be a lifestyle change. It's not just losing weight, it's doing that well. I agree. Which is why I'm organising myself to do it over a period of six to ten months, not over night. As you come to the end of this post, remember that I am a fairly healthy person. I started by saying that in general, everyone but the kidney clinic considers my health to be fairly remarkable for a man my age. I can easily walk a distance of 4 miles if I just get up and do it. But I have to be more than "fairly" healty for this. I have to be early 20s healthy.
So I will be. I don't need luck, but please wish me well.
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