20

Jan

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!!!! We made it y'all!  Yesterday's TGH visit was intense!  Everything turned out well.  Let me tell you how we got there. And so it began. Monica and I left yesterday morning at 5:30 and we parked at TGH just after 7.  We went up to the 6th floor to check in with the Transplant Day Unit and to put my name on the cancellation list for a Pentamidine treatment.  They were booked solid but hey I had to be there all day so no harm in trying.  Then we walked  around the

2017

19

Jan

Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek! Before I forget check out the Events page.  I finally have some upcoming events!  LOL! It is 7:28 am and it finally came to me about 2 hours ago.  I've been trying to think of the right way to describe how I'm feeling about tomorrow's start to my next transplant journey.  Lying in bed earlier this morning it hit me.  Right now it feels like I'm going into TGH tomorrow to interview for a job promotion!  Warning!  I am about to make light of a very serious

2017

17

Jan

Hey Everybody! Welcome back!  Let's get to it!  In order of appearance going all the way back to 7th grade there's Paul and Matt.  Paul's big lesson in perspective didn't come until I came home from Annapolis on Thanksgiving leave while Matt taught me a very valuable lesson which changed the way that I viewed myself at the end of our first school year together.  Matt taught me that being different was ok if different was what I was meant to be. Matt also taught me to tell anyone who didn't like

2017

16

Jan

Hey Everybody! Let me take care of some old business first.  My  final biopsy results came in on Friday and they were all good well mostly good.  The biggies came in correct.  8.5 months in I am still living infection and rejection free y'all!!!   YAY!!!  In an effort to provide the kidney team with the most thorough and current information possible my next biopsy has been moved up to March 7th which will be counted as my annual check up.  I won't count it as 12 months until April 23rd.  The

2017

14

Jan

It is 3:38 am and I have just written a post that I hope to be able to share with you soon.  I received a big surprise yesterday when 2 new characters were added to my tale.  When the time is right I will introduce them to you.  For now I'll go back to the post that I was working on for today.  Hey Everybody! Thank you Mr. Chuck Berry for those wise words set to a very danceable tune!  That man knew what he was singing about y'all! KEEP BANGIN! I am having so much fun because of those two

2017

13

Jan

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!!! Based on conversations that I've had recently It seems to me that some of you reading these posts are not necessarily sure about what constitutes a banger.  Well I'm going to try to clear that up for anyone who may not know..  First of all it still trips me out that you guys are out there reading what I write in these posts.  Again I have to ask why do you spend the most precious commodity that you have which is your time on reading about just what the Old Head

2017

11

Jan

Hey Everybody! It's 9:24 am and I am sitting in the Echo Lab waiting room at Toronto Western Hospital.  I had my biopsy done earlier this morning down on the 3rd floor in the Cath Lab.  Drs. McDonald and Mo presided.  They said everything looked good and my pressures were very good. Now I just have to wait for a couple of days to get my blood work and tissue results  back from the lab.  Mo and I talked about the upcoming Falcons game on Saturday.  He is a little nervous.  I am confident in the

2017

09

Jan

Hey Everybody! Welcome back!  I hope that you all had a good weekend and that your week has gotten off on the right foot.  It is 8:25 am and I am writing live from a chair in Home Hemo.  The blood from my line has been collected and now I'm waiting on someone from the lab to take blood cultures from my arm.   Now it's 9:23 am.  All the necessary blood has been taken for my blood work.  Elizabeth looked ahead and saw that I was scheduled to do my IV iron treatment for the month tomorrow but

2017

06

Jan

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!!! I hope that you are all doing well  this afternoon.  Congratulations on making it to the first Friday of 2017!  It feels good doesn't it?  It's 12:56 pm and I have 2:03 to go on my dialysis run. Writing that post about Ethan reminded me that there was something that I had been meaning to get around to talking about for awhile but I just kept putting other things in front of it.  Well I am about to remedy that situation as I break down the individual parts of the

2017

05

Jan

Hey Everybody! I hope that you are all doing well this afternoon.  I am having a good day.  I have 1:01 left on my dialysis run.  I found a new way to spice things up this morning.  As I was prepping my access sites before I hooked  up to the machine I had to draw off a little blood from each line to clear out the locking solution that was left in the lines from my previous dialysis session.  The tego on my arterial line was really hard to draw through this morning and the simple solution was

2017

04

Jan

Hey Everybody! I hope that 2017 is going well for all of you so far.  We're only 2 days away from Friday!!!  I was thinking that I have managed to completely skip over a big little event that happened 12 days ago.  I hit 8 months post transplant!!!  At this point I'm still living rejection and infection free!!!  YAY!!!  The big day occurred on December 23rd or Christmas Eve Eve. LOL!  There was a lot going on at that time but I still took mental note of the occasion and now I'm making an actual

2017

03

Jan

Hey Everybody! That was a lot of fun for me!  I hope that you enjoyed reading this series of posts as much as I enjoyed writing them.  I have to give credit to my little brother Carl the one I like to pick on when I can.  A conversation that we had a few months ago was what put the idea for this series in my head.  My bother is an ordained deacon in his church.  As such he deals with funerals quite often.  While we were talking he told me that he planned to give the people he loved their

2017

02

Jan

Hey Everybody! Happy New Year!!! Welcome back to the blog!  I hope that you all had good holidays.  It is now 11:45 on Tuesday January 3, 2016.  This one took awhile but I had a lot to say.   It is 5:04 am on the last day of 2016.  I am coming to you live just like I said that I wouldn't.  Confession time.  I had my big plan to take a break for the holidays.  I have been writing almost every day.  Some of that writing has turned into this THT series and the rest will appear in future posts.

2017

31

Dec

Banger Nation!  I wish us all the safest and happiest of new years in 2017. Don't get too crazy tonight!  I want us all back here again on Monday!  Do I make myself clear? Be safe! Have Fun! KEEP BANGIN! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Good night and sleep well.  I'll be back next year.

2016

31

Dec

Hey Everybody! Today I want to talk about some of the good people who run my current hospital away from home at Grand River Hospital here in Kitchener.  I will introduce them in order of appearance and not in order of importance because everyone in this post has played an equal part in keeping me as healthy as possible and headed towards one goal.  That goal is a successful kidney transplant surgery as soon as that can be made possible.  Everyone was very welcoming to me when I arrived.  It's

2016

30

Dec

Hello, My name is Monica Pflug and I am Charles' partner. Charles asked me awhile ago if I would be interested in writing a guest post on his blog. I said, ‘What will I say? I’m not into blogging.’ And yet here I am writing. So here it goes…. Well, I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Charles’ blog starts off when he is in the CVICU for the 2nd time after his LVAD replacement. That was June 2015. And he had the 1st surgery in January 2015, so there is some missing time in there. I’m going to

2016

30

Dec

Happy Birthday Matt!  I love you! Paul Jesus Me and Matt  all celebrate our birthdays in less than a week of each other.  As Paul told me that's some rarefied company that we get to keep at this time of the year!  As I look back over the last 37 years which is the length of time that I have been afforded the privilege of calling Paul and Matt my two best friends. It makes me laugh to see through the perspective of hindsight that life placed those two young men in my path at the tender age of

2016

29

Dec

Hello I am Ryan Morrison, a 43 year old heart transplant recipient. Charles has asked me to provide a note for the KBM blog while he is enjoying Christmas. Thanks Charles for asking this is an interesting request as until this point Nicole (my wife of 15 years) and I have kept our story "off line". Note that “we”, “us”, “our”…is used as I did not got through this alone, Nicole has been at my side as head cheerleader of Team Morrison along with our family for this journey. Here is a much

2016

29

Dec

Hey Everybody! The LDAA meets on the second Wednesday of every month from 6:30 pm-8:30 pm.  Meetings are held in the training room behind the Heffner Toyota showroom at 3121 King Street E. Kitchener.  Everyone is invited to attend.  Only 2 more days left in 2016!  I hope that your holiday season is going well.  Today I want to talk about the group that took me in after I got my 2nd LVAD the LDAA.  LDAA stands for Life Donation Awareness Association.  For me our LDAA meetings represented a

2016

28

Dec

Hey Everybody! Ed was the first manager to be trained in our restaurant after I completed training myself there in the summer of 1996.  I don't know if any of y'all remember but in the summer of '96 Atlanta threw a party and we invited the whole world.  Guess what?  A lot of the invitations were accepted and Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics that year.  It was nowhere near as crazy out in Snellville where Ed and I worked as it was downtown but we were busy enough.  Restaurant life brought our

2016

27

Dec

Hey Everybody! The changes in my relationship with Billy are how I can tell that I've turned into an adult. I met Billy a few days after I got back to Daytona after the Christmas break that I talked about in the previous post about Paul. When i went to the Registrar's office I found out that I was never in danger of being put on academic probation at all.  My previous grades were good enough that one bad semester did not tank my overall GPA.  I had allowed my mind to make things out to be far

2016