I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We had plans for Thanksgiving to do all the sides but with a chicken meatloaf because turkey is a lot for the two of us….we had plans…

Instead we were in my PCPs office at 4:30pm, the last possible appt, the day before Thanksgiving and I had a sinus infection. My transplant team trains us pretty early on, to be aware of any acute changes. We learn what our baseline “chronic illness” feels like and then they like to be notified if anything changes.

I woke up with horrible sinus pressure on Monday last week, so I called my transplant team, told them what was going on and that my home swab was negative. We decided with the holiday coming up and not seeing my PCP until late on Wednesday, that we’d send in an antibiotic for a sinus infection but not start it until my PCP confirmed. Which she did.

So our Thanksgiving plans turned to chicken and wild rice soup in the crockpot with a side of an antibiotic. It ended up being perfect. I’ve learned that infections, take me down harder because I don’t have the reserve to fight it. We are on day 10 of this infection and I feel worse then when it started.

On top of that, Black Friday, we were picking up some stuff mom needed for an event this week at work and I suddenly had severe flank pain, I’d noticed some blood in the urine a few days prior so I basically just thought my cranky kidneys were throwing a fit.

I had to wake mom up at 2am to take me to the ER because the pain was so bad, like rivaling having my chest cracked. One all night stay at the ER and I’d passed a kidney stone.

We both looked at each other, laughed and said you can’t make this stuff up! But at least we were home for the holiday. we mostly just chilled the rest of the weekend, I online shopped, got busted when the packages all started arriving and the foyer looked like every delivery service had delivered. To my credit, 5 of the boxes were the dog’s food that gets automatically delivered…and it’s not my fault that Amazon ships one item at a time. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. and mom just laughs.

Anyways, Monday, woke up feeling like utter crap and now dealing with the GI side effects of an antibiotic and praying to the good Lord that it does not turn into C. Diff again.

At this point, Mom and I do a pretty good job handling these one two punches when they come. We laugh when things go awry, we snuggle under some blankets and watch hallmark movies when I’m feeling yucky, we nap after late night ER stays and we are grateful to have each other.

Despite the holiday not going according to plan, we made the most of it. We took our annual tradition trip to the recycling center with the pups and threw on our matching Christmas Pajamas. Im just grateful that looking back at how our story has unfolded has gifted me the ability to always laugh off the bad, smile through the good and remember that Hope Wins.