Hello friends I know I haven’t been around this past week. It has been a sad sad week and a half. My two boy kitties, Milo and Buster went missing over a week ago. We have a terrible coyote population in this area but we had never had problems with them before. Of course we never had small animals outside either. Even when Molly stayed outside she was a pretty big girl. So we fear the worst. On the Friday that Milo went missing I found a lot of his fur in the side of the yard and down closer to the lake. His fur was so thick and distinct having that beautiful orange color. I can’t tell you how awful it was finding his fur. I gathered it up and put it in a bag. I blamed myself because I wasn’t there when it happened. I never found any of Buster’s hair but he was very short haired. Since we didn’t find blood or bodies of the kitty babies we hoped and prayed maybe they had gotten away and were hiding somewhere and would be back home. As each day goes by my hopes of this are less and less. People have told me that male cats will take off, even after they have been neutered, and return even weeks later. I have my doubts about Milo and Buster though. We don’t really live near a lot of houses and they were such home bodies. They stayed right near the house and usually in the garage where I had all their kitty toys and beds. I have a kitty call that I do for them each night to get them into the garage. I would sit in the garage and do this call and they would come in one by one. After they went missing I walked through the woods and drove up and down the main road doing my kitty call. I am sure if anyone heard it they probably thought I had totally lost my mind. Oh well, it sort of felt like I had.

The other kitties miss them terribly. Mama kitty and Buster were best friends and went everywhere together. They would stand close to each other with their tails wrapped around each other. Mama now sits on the driveway staring out like she is looking for them. The other two girls, Izzy and Sadie seem traumatized so I am not sure what all they saw if it was coyotes that got them. I can’t really bring myself to even think about that. I make sure the garage door is down at night and I never let the kitties out before daylight anymore. We have a lot of lights around our house and I always thought the babies were safe. I have never killed an animal in my life but if I see a coyote on my property in my yard I will not hesitate to shoot it.

I think people who don’t have a love of animals or have pets just don’t fully understand the loss that you feel over losing one of your fur babies. I have cried a million tears and searched constantly for them and pray that by some miracle they will return. That is all I will say about that right now.

Luckily my week was pretty busy and I am thankful to have my mind occupied. I had a dental appointment early Monday morning. I went to Sister Lunch with the sisters. I finished two scarves and got them washed and blocked. I worked on the temperature blanket and another scarf I am making. I binge watched Ozark. I took several walks with the babies. I have also been trying to get a daily walk either on my treadmill or at work. The temps were great last week getting up into the seventies it felt almost like summer. Then just as East Tennessee weather has a tendency to do we had a huge snow over the weekend, well huge for us anyway. We only got about three inches up in our area but some of the surrounding areas got six and seven inches. On Saturday the high temperature barely reached 30 degrees. So the temperature blanket has been getting a lot of color. I will show you a progress update on that at the end of the month. On Saturday morning I went out early and took a lot of pictures of the snow. I will have more of them on Wordless Wednesday. It was such a beautiful heavy snow and just the way I love it it was gone by the next day.

I have missed being in this space with you. I enjoy my time spent here but it was really hard to put any words to anything because I was missing my kitty babies so bad. I have lost many fur babies through the years and it is terrible each and every time but finding Milo’s fur and just having him and Buster disappear like they did has just broken our hearts. We cherish our babies and keep them close to us.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

Happy March. Spring is in the air I can just feel it. March came in like a lamb this morning. Do you ever think of that. If the weather is calm in like a lamb and if it’s windy like a lion. I always think of that in March at the beginning of the month and then at the end of the month because it’s usually the windiest month.

With the beginning of each month I always seem to reflect on past months and try to make a fresh start when I need to. It seems like when making a change starting at a new beginning such as a year or a month or even a week is always easier to do and hope for a change. With the coming of this new month, actually it’s been coming for awhile, I have to admit to myself that I haven’t really been taking care of myself. I think with all that has been going on in the last two years I have let things like health, weight, exercise habits and just taking care of me fall by the wayside. I tend to put on a hoodie and jeans and let that be my wardrobe every day. It’s easy to do that. Today I decided to make a change and start with my outward appearance and hope the rest will follow. I think it will. I need a new healthier me. I am not getting any younger. I am ready for a change!!!

I went down to the lake this morning and took some pictures. Several of the kitties followed me down. Even with my lack of sleep I could see it was a beautiful morning. A morning to be savored and remembered.

Molly had a terrible night she ate too much yesterday and she has such a sensitive tummy So I was up and down with her all night. I got very little sleep. And of course as soon as I get up Scruffy gets up. I am dragging today. All I could think of was getting home and into bed. I hope she has a better night tonight. She always comes to me because she knows I will try to soothe her tummy and pet on her and get her to feeling better. It’s what I do.

I hope your new month is going great and offers endless possibilities.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

It was a Thursday exactly eleven years ago on this date February 24th 2011. It was 3:00 AM. My husband and I were about four hours from home in a hotel room in Downtown Nashville, TN. We had been awake most of the night. Several of our family members were staying in nearby rooms. At 5:00 AM we would all drive the short distance to Vanderbilt Medical Center and check in for surgery. My husband Mark was getting a new kidney and I would be the donor.

My husband discovered he needed a kidney in the summer of 2010. He didn’t even know he was in kidney failure. A routine blood work-up revealed that he had a really high creatinine level. Many many more tests were done that summer into the fall and in October of 2010 he was put on the donor list to receive a new kidney. His doctors told us he could possibly be on the waiting list for several years and that we should look for a living donor.

Fortunately he did not have to wait long. I knew that we were the same blood type and I wanted to be tested to see if I might be a match. The doctors told us not to be too hopeful because the chances would only be about 15% that I would be a match. One test after another was given to me and I kept being compatible. The doctors decided not to test anyone else until I was ruled out as a donor match. We had to go through counseling and lots of the same tests but with different doctors. Each doctor had to make a separate ruling on whether I would be eligible. Then when that decision was made by the individual doctors the results went before an entire panel of doctors at Vanderbilt.

My tests were finished in December of 2010. Mark did not have to spend one minute on dialysis and for this we are so very grateful. But we knew dialysis could happen if he got the flu or pneumonia or anything that could compromise his health and cause his kidney function to decline rapidly.

So we waited and waited for the results. It seemed like forever but it wasn’t only a few weeks. In mid January of 2011 we got the answer we had prayed for, I was a match!!!I would be the donor!!! The surgery was scheduled for February 24th 2011. We had a lot of work to do before that day. We made arrangements to take time off from work. I would need to be out two to four weeks and Mark probably six weeks. We made arrangements to board our baby Patches our basset hound. We had to get a living will and a medical power of attorney. Normally I would have been Mark’s medical power of attorney, to make a medical decision about him if needed, and he would have been mine. But because we would both be having surgery at the same time we had to pick someone else. We chose my sister Sandy who was with us through the entire adventure.

At 7:00 AM on the morning of the surgery date I was taken down first to the operating room and my kidney was prepared for the removal. We could each have one person with us. I chose my sister Sandy and Mark picked his dad. His dad was a Korean War Veteran and one of the strongest men I have ever seen but when he came to wish me good luck, just before the surgery, there were tears in his eyes. At approximately 9:00 AM Mark was brought down to an adjoining room beside me and he was prepped for his surgery. They took the kidney from me, walked through the adjoining room and placed it into Mark’s abdomen. I guess if this had been Grey’s Anatomy this is where they would have dropped it HA!!!! I was really surprised that it was put in the abdomen but that is much simpler than putting it back in the original spot. So technically Mark had three kidneys for a short while. The other two have long quit working.

My surgery was done laparoscopically so my recovery time was very short. Mark’s recovery took a little longer. We spent three days in the hospital and left on Sunday. Since we had doctor visits three times a week to keep a check on the kidney we had to stay at the hotel in Nashville to be close to the hospital. If we had had the transplant closer to home we could have stayed at home and gone to the doctor visits from home. My two sisters, Sandy and Pat stayed there with us at the hospital for almost two weeks. We had adjoining rooms. They took care of us, took us to our appointments, did our laundry and brought us take out. They were and still are angels and we will never ever forget them for the time they took out of their lives and their other family members to be with us.

We don’t have children so we named the kidney Baby Kay. We celebrate every year and this year Baby Kay is eleven years old. Mark takes anti rejection meds every day and will for his entire life. He has done great. He works full time, works out and we travel with no problems. He sees his doctor three times a year. I am on no meds and I sometimes forget I only have one kidney. I can’t tell the difference. Of course Covid scared the crap out of us because it is so much harder for Mark to fight off any disease because of all the immunosuppressants that he takes. So far we have been very fortunate. Mark did have a scary bout with the shingles virus a couple of years ago and had to be out in the hospital for a few days. But other than that it has been uneventful.

There are 93,000 people on the kidney transplant list. Over 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list each month.
13 people die each day while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant.
Every 14 minutes someone is added to the kidney transplant list.
The average wait time for an individual’s first kidney transplant is 3.6 years and can vary depending on health, compatibility and availability of organs.

Mark and I have been truly blessed with the path his transplant took. But there are so many many people needing a kidney to live. If you are ever faced with the decision to donate for someone I would encourage you to really consider it. At the very least I would encourage you to sign your driver’s license and discuss it with your family if you choose to be a donor. I would be happy to share more of our experience with you.

So Happy Birthday to Baby Kay. And many many many more. Giving my kidney to my husband is the best thing I have ever done. I would do it a million times again if I could.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!