Today I am sitting here...

Today I am sitting in a pretty comfortable chair here on dialysis. My entire blood stream circulates through the machine about twenty times during the four hours of treatment. My blood flows out the bottom of two needles (Arterial) , makes its way through a plastic tube, then passes along through a specially-designed artificial kidney...then through a series of pumps comes back into my bloodstream via a second tube which is needled back into the Venus site.

Just another day on dialysis...

The treatment goes on for four hours, three times a week. I'm not saying anything here at all that the hundreds of thousands of dialysis patients are not fully aware of. It is our weekly reality. We are pretty much all praying for a solution that will allow us to return to a "normal" life. That would be...the blessing of a living kidney donor. As many of you reading this will already know, my dear brother Steven donated one of his kidneys to me in 1979. This selfless act resulted in over 34 years of amazing health for me. He still enjoys perfect health after all these years, so it can be said that his "Gift of Life" in no way compromised his health, thank God.

However, it can also be said that his donation was not a cure for me and that it is time for another "Earth Angel" to step up...as dialysis is fraught with hidden dangers. I pray every day that there is another savior out there who will eventually step up to offer that precious gift so that I can have my complete, unhindered life back.

Do you hear me, do you hear my prayers?

How to Feel Your Best on Dialysis

"How to Feel Your Best on Dialysis"...what a preposterous claim...as I sit here with a pretty bad headache at 3:14 in the morning! I wish I had a comprehensive list of things to do, but alas, it is not to be. Beyond taking a steady stream of painkillers to combat these all-too-frequent headaches...which works sometimes but most of the time NOT, I cannot say. Oh yeah, there is the strategy of showing up in the ER for the REALLY strong painkillers, like injections of Hydromorphone or Tor idol for the bad bad headaches...been there 10 times in the past 30 days or so...but those drugs have some nasty side-effects all of their own.

One thing I've found helpful for that past few nights is "Melatonin", which is a naturally occurring hormone that signals sleep in your brain. That seems to help quite a bit in the drifting off to sleep thing at, you know, 10:30 or so at night. When you suffer from insomnia...which apparently is quite common for us dialysis patients...it is a huge relief to just naturally fall asleep like a normal human. Not to mention, Melatonin has very few, if any, side-effects. My doctor actually prescribed a certain medication to help with insomnia that had many nasty (possible) side effects that included high blood pressure, nausea and vomiting to name but a few.

Oh yay, like I need those side effects when they are some of the side effects that I already suffer from taking the pile of meds I'm already on!

The reason I'm going on about insomnia is...this is one of the things I wrestle with frequently. I have found that without a good night's sleep everything else tends to go to hell in a hand basket, not to put too fine a point on it. There, now that I've got that off my chest, maybe I can get a bit more sleep, with any luck.

"Dancing with Rejection" Available Across Platforms

I was happy to discover some advanced features at the FriesenPress portal for my first book ...

"Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality"  this morning.

Cover Art features a remake of my "Recovery" mural, originally designed in 1979.

The book is now available at Amazon.com in the "Kindle" version at this link.

You can now preview the first 40 pages at this link.

Who will this book appeal to? Certainly my fellow Dialysis Warriors (this book is for YOU!) and also kidney transplant donors (Earth Angels ALL!) and of course kidney transplant recipients...but also, art lovers of all stripes.

With a couple of my bestselling author buddies in Saskatoon...Left -Right: Jefferson Smith, Wes Funk and myself.

Michael R. Gaudet was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure only fourteen years after his father, Robert, died of kidney disease in Michael’s childhood. After his initial diagnosis, Michael was determined to achieve a measure of immortality. 

He designed and painted the seminal mural "Recovery 1", which he donated to the Toronto hospital that saved his life. This singular act cast the mold for the rest of his life, in which he battled chronic kidney disease and forged a career as one of Canada’s best-known mural painters. 

Michael has since designed and painted over 60 large murals across Canada. Today, he lives with his wife Sharon in the resort village of Manitou Beach in central Saskatchewan, where they own and operate a seasonal art gallery called “G-G’s Gallery & Gifts.” 

Michael is in the final stages of releasing Book 1 of the trilogy "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Please steer your search engine here to visit the Facebook page that was created to usher in the launch. Curious? Could this be the book for you? Come on over, we'll see you there.

The Excitement Mounts as "Dancing w Rejection" is PUBLISHED!

After about two years of intense focus...despite or maybe because of...battling the mental fogginess that comes along with kidney failure... I am so excited. Why? Because as of late last week, I was informed by the great folks at "Friesen Press" that my 1st book, "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality" has been published!

After juggling countless moving parts, I was thrilled to finally hold the "proof copies" in my hands!

You can imagine, after all of this time, that it is a big deal to finally see this "Passion Project" come to fruition. Even at this early juncture, it is now possible to go ahead...to begin generating sales. This thanks once again to FriesenPress, as their policy is to "print on demand".

I stacked my "Proof Copy" units to invoke my first official order!

My father Robert sadly passed away at the tender age of 29, leaving behind his wife and six young children. It was therefore my joy to dedicate my "Passion Project" to his memory. I will be so happy and proud to see his memory surface as a heroic figure in "Dancing with Rejection". In fact, this aspiration is one of the paramount reasons why I set out on this writing adventure.

Robert Joseph Gaudet, my loving father, who was struck down in his youth by kidney failure. 

I will do everything in my power to honor and cherish the memory of my dad. His indomitable spirit will live on in the pages of "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Once you read the book, you will clearly understand the thinly-veiled reference to this!

The author shown receiving life-saving "dialysis therapy", a 3x a week measure, with no end in sight.

Michael R. Gaudet was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure only fourteen years after his father, Robert, died of kidney disease in Michael’s childhood. After his initial diagnosis, Michael was determined to achieve a measure of immortality. 

He designed and painted the seminal mural "Recovery 1", which he donated to the Toronto hospital that saved his life. This singular act cast the mold for the rest of his life, in which he battled chronic kidney disease and forged a career as one of Canada’s best-known mural painters. 

Michael has since designed and painted over 60 large murals across Canada. Today, he lives with his wife Sharon in the resort village of Manitou Beach in central Saskatchewan, where they own and operate a seasonal art gallery called “G-G’s Gallery & Gifts.” 

Michael is in the final stages of releasing Book 1 of the trilogy "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Please steer your search engine here to visit the Facebook page that was created to usher in the launch. Curious? Could this be the book for you? Come on over, we'll see you there.

Dancing with Rejection: COMING SOON.

COMING SOON ! 

Michael R. Gaudet was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure only fourteen years after his father, Robert, died of kidney disease in Michael’s childhood. After his initial diagnosis, Michael was determined to achieve a measure of immortality. 

He designed and painted the seminal mural "Recovery 1", which he donated to the Toronto hospital that saved his life. This singular act cast the mold for the rest of his life, in which he battled chronic kidney disease and forged a career as one of Canada’s best-known mural painters. 

Michael has since designed and painted over 60 large murals across Canada. Today, he lives with his wife Sharon in the resort village of Manitou Beach in central Saskatchewan, where they own and operate a seasonal art gallery called “G-G’s Gallery & Gifts.” 

Michael is in the final stages of releasing Book 1 of the trilogy "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Please steer your search engine here to visit the Facebook page that was created to usher in the launch. Curious? Could this be the book for you? Come on over, we'll see you there.

KidneyMatch.org...An Interview with Founder Dylan Loewe

My friend Dylan Loewe of WestWingWriters fame has recently launched an amazing new website called www.KidneyMatch.org that is designed to facilitate the successful matching of kidney donor to recipient.  This website operates on the premise that should a kidney patient in need of a living donor present with a so-called "incompatible" donor ( which means a willing live donor, but of a different blood type) then the pair is entered into a massive data base which seeks the most "compatible" donor and then unites the well-matched pair. The incompatible donor is then also united with their best match!

Dylan has very generously offered to answer a few of my questions regarding his role as president of www.KidneyMatch.org, wrapped around his busy schedule today. A couple of months ago, this gentleman joined the Facebook group that my wife Sharon and I founded called Kidney Transplant Donors and Recipients. This group is one of the busiest places on the internet for all things "kidney", with almost 12,000 active members from every corner of the globe.

MRG: What was your chief motivation for launching www.KidneyMatch.org?

DL: I wanted to empower kidney patients. I wanted to give people an easy way to meet each other, find each other, and save each other's lives. And that just doesn't exist right now. 
I remember reading an article years ago about a young woman who found a paired match by searching message boards, and I just thought, there has to be a better way. And that really was my inspiration for Kidney Match. Coping with ESRD and dialysis is already hard enough. In my view, it's just completely indefensible to have a system that is this complicated and difficult to navigate. It should be as simple as using an app on your smartphone. Which, by the way, we are currently developing for Kidney Match.

MRG: Is there a cost for potential donors and recipients to take advantage of what the website has to offer? 

DL: Absolutely not.  And there never will be. Using the site will always be free.  Here's how I think about it: when we help facilitate a paired swap, the hospitals that perform the transplants will make money.  The insurance companies will save money because a post-transplant patient is far less expensive than on on dialysis.  The pharmaceutical companies will make money because they will have new people taking immune suppressants and other post-transplant medications.  That's a lot of companies that will stand to profit if Kidney Match is successful. So it should be them-and not the patients-who support our yearly budget.  And by the way, they agree!  They've been nothing but supportive in our conversations so far.

MRG: Has the website been successful in its mandate? I appreciate that these are early days, but do you have any success stories to share? 

DL: We're obviously still in the very early days, but I can confidently say that, yes, it has been successful so far.  People on the site are communicating with each other on a daily basis and many of them have found potential matches.  I suspect it'll be another three months or so before the first of those matches goes all the way to the transplantation stage.

MRG: Will you post these stories of human triumph on the site?

DL:  Absolutely, with permission, of course.

MRG: How do you propose to share the information that is garnered on your website with the medical community to expedite the successful candidates for their life-saving surgery?

DL:  We work directly with transplant centers to help coordinate and facilitate matches.  Once two pairs on the site let us know that they want to match with each other, we run their medical data (with permission) through a complex algorithm to determine the probability of a successful match.  Then we pass that information along to the transplant centers, where they can do confirming cross match testing.

The algorithm we use was developed by one of the world's foremost experts on kidney exchange algorithms and software.  He currently works on the team that manages the algorithm and software for UNOS.  He's brilliant and we are so lucky to have him.

One other thing I'd add:  Sometimes when patients join Kidney Match, they don't even have to start searching for a match, before we contact them to tell them that we've found one!  That's because we run everyone in our pool through the algorithm software the moment they sign up, to see if they have an ideal match already on the site.  We want to be as proactive as possible, so if our software tells us you have a match, we'll get in touch and start the process right away.

Dylan Loewe (left) with Vice-President Joe Biden on Air Force 1.

Michael R. Gaudet was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure only fourteen years after his father, Robert, died of kidney disease in Michael’s childhood. After his initial diagnosis, Michael was determined to achieve a measure of immortality. He received a wildly successful kidney transplant which sustained him for over 34 years, but returned to dialysis therapy in mid-May of 2014. He now awaits a second "Gift of Life".

He designed and painted the seminal mural "Recovery 1", which he donated to the Toronto hospital that saved his life. This singular act cast the mold for the rest of his life, in which he battled chronic kidney disease and forged a career as one of Canada’s best-known mural painters. 

Michael has since designed and painted over 60 large murals across Canada. Today, he lives with his wife Sharon in the resort village of Manitou Beach in central Saskatchewan, where they own and operate a seasonal art gallery called “G-G’s Gallery & Gifts.” 

Michael is in the final stages of releasing Book 1 of the trilogy "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Please steer your search engine here to visit the Facebook page that was created to usher in the launch. Curious? Could this be the book for you? Come on over, we'll see you there.

A "Visual Prayer" for Every Kidney Patient

About two years ago, my wife Sharon and I started a Facebook group called "Kidney Transplant Donors and Recipients" (aka "KTDR") . She and I were the first two members. Within a year, the membership had swelled to over one-thousand members! The purpose of this group was to create a community that would hopefully share encouragement and moral support. It was working. There was a palpable spirit of sharing and caring that we all enjoyed in those early days. At the beginning, I decided to use the seminal "Recovery" mural as our masthead. I'm referring to the notorious mural that I designed and painted at age 21, that was donated to the Toronto hospital that plucked me back from the abyss of an early grave with a life-saving intervention: dialysis.

Seminal mural "Recovery" was designed and painted at age 21, and donated to the Toronto hospital that saved my life.

When the group was first founded, I still had bragging rights to over thirty-four years with my wildly successful kidney transplant from my brother Steve, which took place on that glorious day of October 17th, 1979. It felt good to be able to say that I held the "kidney transplant longevity record" for Saskatchewan at that time. A year later, our ranks mushroomed to in excess of twelve-thousand worldwide members!

As kidney patients and their caregivers are constantly saying to anyone that will listen, a kidney transplant is NOT a cure, but it is damn good treatment, when all goes well! Flash forward to mid-May of 2014...this was the time when I finally admitted, after about two final years of kicking and screaming in protest, that the life of my transplanted kidney had reached its "best before date". Certain lethal substances were above and beyond acceptable levels in my bloodstream. I was dangerously close to a heart attack, or stroking out. Dialysis was once again imperative!

Once the dust settled after I went back on dialysis, I decided that the "generic" image of the "recovery" figures needed to be more specific, so I revisited the image to tweak it with a certain attribute. After all, I reasoned, the image was in its own way a kind of "invocation" for health in much the same way that my ancient forefathers painted "game" on their cave walls as a sort of visual prayer for a successful hunt. I decided, bearing this progeny in mind, to strategically place a "kidney" in the abdomen of the figure on the far right, to plant that seed in the cosmos...to invoke a SECOND TRANSPLANT from a LIVING DONOR.

There is a subtle but powerful change in the 2015 version of my "Recovery" image. 

Now this revised version of the "Recovery" motif graces the masthead of KTDR, as a visual prayer for ALL the members and for every kidney patient worldwide, that we may ALL attract a living donor, and having done so, sustain glowing, vibrant health for many many year! That is my prayer that I offer up to the universe.

Michael R. Gaudet was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure only fourteen years after his father, Robert, died of kidney disease in Michael’s childhood. After his initial diagnosis, Michael was determined to achieve a measure of immortality. 

He designed and painted the seminal mural "Recovery 1", which he donated to the Toronto hospital that saved his life. This singular act cast the mold for the rest of his life, in which he battled chronic kidney disease and forged a career as one of Canada’s best-known mural painters. 

Michael has since designed and painted over 60 large murals across Canada. Today, he lives with his wife Sharon in the resort village of Manitou Beach in central Saskatchewan, where they own and operate a seasonal art gallery called “G-G’s Gallery & Gifts.” 

Michael is in the final stages of releasing Book 1 of the trilogy "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Please steer your search engine here to visit the Facebook page that was created to usher in the launch. Curious? Could this be the book for you? Come on over, we'll see you there.