Sgt. David M. Nessley, Sr. USMC

When I get down on myself, which is a lot, I try to remember those who have it worse than I do. I wish it were harder but there are many out there worse off than I am. I think of the nurse at my clinic who is on chemo, all the people who don't qualify for a transplant and have to be on dialysis the rest of their lives, or the people who need a heart and don't have the possibility of something like dialysis that can keep them going until that life-saving transplant. Most of all, though, I think about my grandpa. I’d rather stay on dialysis the rest of my life than go through what he has to go through. My grandpa has dementia and hardly remembers who any of us are anymore. I saw him last year and I was told that it might be the last time I see him because he was getting bad. For some reason, in my brain, I couldn't accept that. Now I realize that, while I had some good moments with my grandfather last year, I didn't take the appropriate amount of time to tell him how I felt about him. Whether he would have processed it or not, and he likely wouldn't have, I still wish I had told him what he meant to me. My other 2 grandparents died when I was a kid and they both went suddenly so I didn't get the opportunity I probably lost last summer.

I wanted to tell my grandpa, who was a Marine Sergeant in World War II and a Bronze Star winner for bravery, that he was one of my heroes. But I’m not the one who has it worse in this story -- my grandfather does. He is a perfectly healthy human being who eats, sleeps, and lives in a world he increasingly forgets about. That’s a kind of hell that I've never experienced even in all my years of hospitals, surgeries, and organ failures.

I've lost my grandfather and that's sad for me, but what's worse is that I've lost him while he is still alive. Being hooked to a machine 12 hours out of the week is really small potatoes when it's stacked up against things like that. There's no machine that's gonna make him remember his son, daughter, grandkids, or friends.

In the grand scheme of things, I'll get a new kidney and move on with my life. But there will still be 10s of thousands left behind on dialysis and I think about that a lot and remember that things can always be worse. I kind of think of it in prison terms: There will always be someone who has been on dialysis 1 day longer than I have and that person has it worse than I do.

There is good news for today's blog. Mr. Moreno, an older gentlemen who had been treated at my clinic for quite a long time, got his kidney on Wednesday, 11 November. I sincerely hope everything works out for him and that I don't see him return -- at least not as a patient.

I swear life is not normally this dreary on dialysis. It may not seem that way from reading these posts. It's certainly not the end of the world. And that's kind of the point of this entry I suppose. Dialysis isn't the end of the world at all, it's just a bump along the way. I've never met anyone who has let dialysis define who they are. Those who are able (and they are usually the ones who've been on a good deal of time and have adapted to it) go to work as many hours as they can, coach their kids’ Little League games, and even nurse others. These people are mothers, fathers, uncles, grandmothers, etc. What they are not are dialysis patients, at least not to their families and friends.

Remember, when times are bad and you think you have it worse than someone else, take a look around because chances are someone in your vicinity is going through something just as tough, if not tougher than you are. This is one truth that I have learned on dialysis. I've also learned that I was far too self absorbed to see this truth when I was 25 and started dialysis the first time. With age comes wisdom. As always I wish you, my readers, good health and great love.