Info Session

I just wanted to give a little background info so people might better understand where the idea for creating these cartoons come from. It all started when I was 3 years old, I was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma stage IV. Back then (1986-87) it was a pretty rare cancer and my doctors didn't quite know how to treat it so my treatment was purely experimental. I was given doses of full body radiation and 6 different chemos. My parents were told I had a 10% chance of survival and that was being generous. As you can probably guess, I beat the odds but it not with long term effects. The full body radiation damaged my kidneys, stunted my growth and development, and I will never be able to conceive children. I spent a lot of my childhood bouncing back and forth from home and the hospital. By age 16 both my kidneys had completely failed. I was lucky enough to receive a transplant rather quickly thanks to my aunt, it lasted 9 successful years. Unfortunately in 2010 I got very ill and we found out the kidney had rejected. I spent weeks in the hospital trying to save it, at one point I stopped breathing and had to be put on a ventilator. Again, I pulled through. It was then I hd to start hemodialysis. A lot of people think once you go on dialysis everything is all better but it's really not that simple. Some people, such as myself, suffer complications from dialysis. A major complication a lo of dialysis patients run into is fluid overload. Because we no longer urinate, sorry I know you needed to know that, we rely on dialysis to remove fluid from our bodies otherwise it can build up, most notably in the area around the lungs. I had quite a few run ins with this problem, it got to the point where I needed the fluid manually drained. After each drainage I experienced a partial lung collapse so I wound up being admitted to the hospital and having chest tubes placed. Though once I got better acclimated to my dialysis treatment I stopped experiencing these problems. In the midst of all this I had been searching for a donor for a second transplant but it was cut short when a tumor was found on my native kidney, which was removed. The surgery to remove my native kidney had a small hiccup though, the surgeon must have nicked something because I was suddenly full of fluid. They tried removing it all at once during dialysis which did not go well, it was too much on my heart and it stopped beating. Thankfully the were able resuscitate me and  came up with a better way to remove all the fluid. Since the tumor was cancer I now had to wait two years to be in the clear. Two years later we found that my other native kidney has a tumor, it is also removed and with much better results from surgery. I now have to wait another two years to be in the clear. I have a long road ahead of me. I have to continually watch my fluid intake, dialysis wears me out, I'm still trying to gain back all the weight I lost from being sick, my voice has never been the same since I've been intubated so many times, and I now have congestive heart failure because of my problems with fluid. Also I have to regain all my muscle mass, and I need a wheel chair if I go anywhere that requires extensive walking. I keep my chin up though and and take it one day at a time.

This is me after I got sick:

This is me before I got sick: