Jam packed day of fun!

Today was beautiful! Here's a recap:

It started out with me teaching the elementary Sunday School class at church. It was cute, seeing the kids' drawings of Paul, Julius and the others on their ship sailing to Italy. I should scan them in and post them for you to see! The kids seemed to like the lesson, especially since I didn't try to rush through the lesson, which I think I've been doing a lot of lately. The curriculum we use to teach out of is obviously for Sunday School classrooms that have more than 45 minutes set aside for teaching. So today I decided to break down the lesson down, so instead of learning about the whole chapter of Acts 27, we worked on verses 1-14 only. Next week we'll try to get through 15-32 and the week after that, we'll finish the chapter.

After Sunday School, we experienced a beautiful sermon on Mark 15:1-15. Pastor Martie helped explain what was going on, which is always so nice, a breath of fresh air. I love the expository style of preaching that he does! I'm not afraid to admit that reading the Bible on my own can be a bit confusing sometimes, so it's nice to have someone explain the details of what's going on and what it meant at that time. So anyway, Mark 15 explains what happens when Jesus was handed over to Pontius Pilate. I'd never really known who Pilate was until this morning (the Roman governor of Judea). And I'd never known who Barabbas was (a guy who murdered people, a terrorist, so to speak). So it was good to learn that stuff.

My heart was affected at the end of the sermon when Pastor Martie compared us (me, you, all people) to Barabbas. That we are all sinners, that we all deserve to be eternally punished for going our own ways, but we were "set free" just like Barabbas was. So instead of us being punished, it was Jesus who was punished for our sins. Pilate asked, "Do you want me to release the King of the Jews or Barabbas?" and all the people shouted, Barabbas, Barabbas! So the convicted murderer was set free by Pilate, who did that to please the people. And then Pilate ordered Jesus to be flogged and crucified. Jesus became the sin and paid the price for our sin. Good stuff!

After church, we had lunch with good friend Kirstie at Arby's, and then we all went to visit a mutual friend who's been laid up in her house since July suffering from the effects of ankle surgery. It was great to see her. She keeps getting better and better every time I visit her. The aquatic physical therapy seems to be working wonders!

It was such a beautiful day, we knew we just HAD to go for a bike ride!

We drove about 40 minutes away to southwestern Wake County to ride the mountain bike trails at Harris Lake Park. I hadn't ridden here in at least a year and a half. They've done some trail work out there that's really nice! Here's 2 pics from the trailside of the intermediate loop.





It wasn't the best ride of my life, but hey, it was a ride! You know the saying, "A bad day on a mountain bike beats the best day spent at work". Okay, well maybe you've never seen it like that. Usually I see that saying on the bumper of some older truck driving about Vance or Granville county, and instead of it referencing mountain biking, it's about fishing or hunting...

My feet hurt pretty much the whole ride. About 10 minutes into our ride, I had to stop and adjust my shoe straps so that my foot was practically falling out at the top of every pedal stroke. I can't wait to get my new cycling shoes this week. My feet have grown about a size and a half in the past 2 years. I used to be a solid size 10 or 10.5, but now I'm an 11-12, depending on the type of shoe. Rob ordered me a super nice pair, size 44 now! Almost time to say goodbye to my 42.5 Sidi's. It's been a nice 4 years!

After the ride, we went out for dinner at Los Portales in Durham. Dining out with a husband who has no kidneys and is on dialysis is challenging. But sometimes you just gotta let loose and eat the kind of food you're not really supposed to. Like Mexican food. Like chorizo. Like refried BEANS. And CORN chips and TOMATO salsa, all washed down with a little Sprite. Oh man, most of you reading this will not be on dialysis or even know much about how much our kidneys really do for our bodies. Basically, they filter out all this stuff:



A plate full of sodium (a lot in that chorizo), phosphorous (there's a ton of it in the beans) and potassium. It's a kidney's job to filter that stuff out. Of course our bodies need some of this stuff in order to work, but it certainly doesn't need all of it, and that's where our kidneys come into play. So we've been watching the sodium, phosphorous, calcium and potassium since Rob started dialysis in January 2008. But only since this past June have we had to really watch and closely monitor Rob's fluid intake. So things like this are deemed a special treat:



Since Rob doesn't produce urine, all that he takes into his body must be taken off by a dialysis machine, or sweated off during exercise. A big role that I play with Rob is "mean nurse", or at least it feels like that sometimes! I see his lab results sometimes and if something is too high, I'll get on Rob and say, "Have you been taking your renal vitamin and your FosRenal binders?" in that tone that's sort of like a cross between a concerned doctor and your Mom asking you why you haven't taken out the trash yet. And then sometimes, Rob will tell me that his dialysis treatment was awful, so I naturally ask him, "how much did you take off tonight?" And he'll answer 6 or 7...and I give him "the eye". Mmmm, we gotta get that to stay around 5, okay hun?

I help out in that a lot by reminding him to not drink so much when we're at home and out and about. If I see him at the fridge, reaching for the cranberry juice, I'll stand there and watch him, and if he's drinking for too long (yes, we drink out of the container...one day that'll stop, I promise!) I'll say as nice as possible, "sweetie, how are your fluids today?" Which means, you've been at work all day, and I have no idea how many times you stopped by the drinking fountain, and I'm worried that you've had too much to drink already, so for you to be drinking that, I umm, just want you to be careful, because it could lead to a yucky treatment for you later tonight.

I love our life, even with all the dietary restrictions and lifestyle impediments that dialysis brings on. And I love my husband so much, I hate seeing him stressed out when he has a bad treatment due to taking off too much fluid. I wish I could press the fast-forward button like in that movie "Click" and just skip forward to when Rob gets a kidney transplant!

That's all from me for tonight. I'll see if I can get Rob to blog now!