Good news!  Great news!

I love Christmas.  And today I received my first Christmas present.  It was delivered by my specialist and it came in the form of a decision.  A decision to stop my dialysis and delay it until after Christmas.  The best present ever!

My body is still stressed and recovering from my two surgeries.  My toxins are also up and down.  So the decision of the day is that I stop dialysis.  I stop.  I rest.  I recover and stabilise.  I will also get an iron infusion, keep up my injections and watch my diet.  I will take a break from the invasive life support and live freely over Christmas.

This decision has made me very happy and this is the best Christmas present I could have hoped for (ok apart from the obvious of a new kidney).  Today I smiled and laughed in a way that I thought was lost in another world.  A world that I no longer lived in.  A world that no longer exists, for me.  But today I left the hospital with a skip in my step.  I left the hospital feeling lighter and more positive about my new world.  I was smiling.  I felt energised.  I felt good.

And I’m excited for this feeling to arrive just in time for Christmas.  I love Christmas.  I love everything about it.  The trees.  The lights.  The colours.  The fun of family and food.  The sharing of stories and the sharing of life and love.  This year Christmas is bringing with it a different tone.  A tone of gratefulness at a new and different level.  I feel lucky to be here.  I feel lucky to be alive.  I feel lucky to see and share this Christmas with my family and friends and I plan on making the most of it.  Especially now that I won’t have to deal with dialysis until after Christmas.

It’s been a tough year.  A year of shock and change.  However, I do feel that the cloud is starting to lift and I’m starting to see the blue sky.  I know I have huge challenges ahead of me but I believe we have put down good foundations with the surgeries and the taste of dialysis.

I know that I’ll look back on this time as a dark period.  Even now I read back through my posts and I feel the heaviness of my sadness and grief.  But I believe this darkness is shifting.  Yes I’ll still have hard days but I must believe of the promise of tomorrow.  I must believe that my days ahead are brighter than recent past.  I do believe.  I do believe in a better tomorrow.  I do believe that more positive posts are to come – I promise.

I love Christmas and I believe in the promise of 2016.