Treading Water

News has not been great. Viral buggies tough - won't give up the fight. I'm in this sort of purgatory, taking all these pills, giving them blood for labs every week, and nothing seems to change.

I don't know how I got to this point. I used to see people who look like me and I know I said, "Don't let me get to that point - pull the plug!" But there's been no plug to pull. Just a series of events that kept putting me back in the hospital through December - and here I am.

160 pounds, thin, limp hair, tubes coming out of my body. I'm weak, unsteady on my feet, unmotivated.

I've got to put on weight. They want me eating 2500 - 3000 calories a day but it's really hard. My stomach fills up so quickly. I never know how something is going to taste. I've burned out on the few things I could eat for the past month or so because I was eating them all the time.

Boo Hoo - I'm such a whiner...

Still alive...

Tough times - battling infection - trying to get on the transplant list. Side-effects of one of the antibiotics basically paralyzed me.

Lost lots of weight - down to low 160s.

Hardest times of my life. Dragging the family down. Everyone thought I was a goner in January but I pulled through.

Trying to eat and put on strength and weight. But my fave foods have just tasted like cardboard in my mouth. That is starting to ease up - been enjoying more things every couple days lately.

I can say I've been through the MCV meatgrinder and have lived to tell the tale. But, as they say, "They're a mess, but they're the best."