humbling

i'm feeling roughly 123483958 times better than i was earlier this week. the swelling's gone down and i can move pretty comfortably now, despite the perpetually raised right shoulder/hunchback i've developed from tensing my shoulder all week so as to not feel like my chest was ripping. i'm feeling pretty optimistic. friday was the first plasmapheresis treatment where i didn't encounter any complications with my blood pressure. there's a boy in the bed across from me who has to go through a few hours of dialysis directly after a couple hours of plasmapheresis. i can't even fathom this, but he seems to take it in stride. on tuesday he's getting his second transplant (his first one recently failed), and he's only 18. i am really, incredibly fortunate to have come this far without needing dialysis or a transplant. it sounds cliché, but i think it's true that there's always a reason to be grateful, even if that reason isn't always clear. and i like to feel grateful. for example: five years ago, to make a long story short, i wasn't very close with my father. and now, jackie and i are taking him out to dinner for father's day, and a week from tuesday he'll give me one of his kidneys.