I should probably say a few things first

Like that I am super excited that last semester I made the Dean's list while being super sick and doing homework in the ICU...

Or that I am super excited that I am a National Honors Society member in college which means way more to me than it did in high school since I knew a few of the people in my high school NHS weren't so honorable...

I have been trying to get out and do a lot of fun things this week so I am not trapped in my house like I am in jail since that is how I have been feeling...my grandparents from AZ are in town so I have been getting out with them...which is a blessing...yet they also worry a lot...so that's no fun...my grandpa also recently had hip surgery and then came to the snow and ice of the Midwest...he has been walking a little slower and even fell on the ice today...that makes me worry and I want to help him out as much as I can...he thanked me the other day for doing that and I told him I was helping him out because I knew what it was like to need help...it's weird seeing him like this because he has always been so healthy and so strong...he is starting to show signs of his age for the first time in his life at 82...

I also have a doctor's appointment this week on the 25th...which is Wednesday...so we should find out more about this whole weird situation with me no longer being on the transplant list...what that means now...what we do next...how we get my blood counts up...

I got a call during breakfast on Thursday...which was supposed to be a fun day...about scheduling an operation on February 1st for a fistula...so I have an outpatient operation that day now...my current dialysis port...called a perm cath that looks like this...

which is close to the heart and can cause easy infections...and is only put in temporarily...they put it in when they think you will have a transplant soon...or when on dialysis for a little time...a fistula looks like this though...

its under the skin and looks a bit like little caps on your veins...this means you have to poke through the skin to be hooked up to the machine...this news is making me a little more moody than normal...I am having a hard time looking at the benefits of this so I keep saying dumb things...like that it will be easier to take a shower with this...or I can go swimming again...but really the truth of it is that because this is a permanent access I know that means it is longer until I have a transplant...a longer time until I feel better...another surgery when I have already had so many...I was even wondering today how much of my body will be left after this that is not covered with scars...having this access also means having to poke myself everyday with needles to hook up to dialysis...which might also mean my arm will be all bruised up because I seem to bruise whenever a needle touches my skin...I am not looking forward to any of these things and still find myself wanting to cry all the time even though I hate crying so much...

I have sort of been wondering all week what I would write about...I was so proud of what I wrote last week and felt so good about it I kept thinking how will I top that...and I don't know...I feel like that was such a good post that sort of inspirational (at least for me) and had some verses and was all like "go Jesus"...but I am not also so good at writing those kinds of posts...at least I don't think I am...I don't always have these great new ideas about what the Bible says...

The funny thing is that while I have been thinking about this the story of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego...I keep thinking about how they said "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." Daniel 3:17-18…now not that I have some king trying to get me to serve him but I keep thinking about believing and standing strong no matter what happens…I often wonder what these three men were really thinking…I believe that we can trust in god but still also be scared…to me these are natural human emotions…like right now I am still saying Lord have your way in my life while also being afraid of what that means because I thought many times that it couldn’t get worse yet it has…so I wonder if Shadrach Meshach and Abednego were scared out of their minds while standing by that furnace…if I am being honest I would have probably been pooping my pants thinking “k God I don’t know what you are going to do but I know you will do something…either you are going to get me out of this or I am about to see you face to face”…sometimes I look up to the people in the Bible and think they don’t have the feelings of fear and sadness like I do…but when I think about it more I know that they do…they are humans just like me and had those struggles and had those times when they wanted to scream or cry or didn’t understand what God was doing…we now can read the end of the story and see that God saved them in the fire and changed lives through that but they didn’t know what was going to happen…they didn’t know God’s plan…so who can say if they didn’t crap their pants beforehand out of fear while wondering what God was going to do…

I guess I will just have to met them in Heaven…until then I will say to God no matter what…wither you deliver me from more pain or not…no matter what comes next and how much it overwhelms me and scares me I will say have your way…