Yesterday was my day off of work but it was a very busy day!

Royce and I started the morning off by taking Turbo to the vet.  He was very overdue for his yearly checkup and shots. Turbo has consistently weighed 20 pounds for the last couple years but has unexpectedly dropped down to 17 pounds.  Because he will be roughly 11 years old this year, we decided to send off some blood work to check on him.  Thankfully, he is still happy and eating and drinking so unless the blood work shows something distressing we will continue on with life as it is for now. 

I dropped Royce off at school at 9 and realized I had forgotten that it was pajama and stuffed animal day.  I had dressed Royce in a cute outfit in preparation for this evening’s activity (I’ll explain in a minute).  Thankfully I had his BAHA Moose stuffed animal in the car.  This is a Moose who wears BAHA hearing aids like Royce does on his right side.  It didn’t seem like Royce really cared that he wasn’t in his PJ’s so that was helpful for me.  LOL!

Then I had to swing by work to drop off the tater-tot hot dish I had forgotten to bring on Monday.  My sister Jackie had helped me make two pans of the hot dish for the church potluck this weekend.  Since we had so much leftover we figured her and I could eat it for lunch every day this week. 

My next stop was to the Social Security office.  Because Royce has end stage kidney disease, he qualifies for Medicare.  What I didn’t realize was; I still needed to pay a monthly premium of $140 for him to be on Medicare Part B (which covers his dialysis treatments).  So my visit to the SS office was to pay off the premium from the last six months.  Medicare cancelled the Part B covered for Royce on December 31 since I hadn’t paid the premium.  So my next step was to call my insurance to see if he even needs to have Medicare Part B since I have health insurance through my job.  If my insurance requires Royce to keep his Medicare Part B then I will have to return to the SS office to petition to have it restarted.  I spent an hour at the SS office and 30 minutes on the phone in my car and still don’t have an answer to what I should do for Royce’s insurance coverage.  I hope that Royce will NOT need to keep the Medicare coverage because paying an extra $140 a month for insurance is not really in our budget. 

I was able to spend almost 2 hours at home before heading back into town.  I picked Royce up around 3pm for his dialysis appointment.  He didn’t eat very much of his lunch and hadn’t drunk any of his milk.  I was surprised that he didn’t drink his milk because he loves his special kidney milk and usually drinks the entire thermos in one sitting.  Thankfully he did have an appetite at dialysis and ate his usual cafeteria bread stick and the two buns I had brought from home. 

At 4pm we had a special visitor.  Brian Todd from the Post-Bulletin came to dialysis to chat about Royce and his story.  I did my best to tell Royce’s story but I still thought of things I forgot to include after the interview was over.  I did get a little tearful when Brian asked what I was looking forward to after Royce gets a new kidney other than not having dialysis.  I wanted to say, I can’t really fathom a life after transplant right now because going to dialysis is the only way of life Royce and I know together.  I never expected for Royce to still be on dialysis when January of 2020 rolled around, but here we are.  So to think of life after a kidney transplant feels like a distant dream that I know will happen one day but until that day we have to live in the present because this is our reality. 

And speaking of reality, it was back to school and work for Royce and me today.  I believe the story about Royce will run tomorrow in the Thursday January 30^th edition of the Post-Bulletin.  I will share the link to the electronic version of the story as soon as I can.  Thank you to everyone for your support and love!