So, I asked an old curling buddy (yes, those exist) about his experiences with kidney disease. He’s farther along than I am, having just had a transplant (yay!), so clearly I can learn from his experience.

He has gratiously permitted me to post this. I quote:

Hi Mike and Maria,

Feel free to use anything I’ve written in your blog posts or on Facebook. All dates are rough, I am using My chart, but some of the data is really buried and there isn’t a really good search engine on Mychart.

I just came across this story from the Sudbury.com news.

I like the ‘Vette.

The car show featured premium cars as well as live music, an ice cream truck, food vendors and a kid zone. Given the name, the event also featured a booth where people could sign up to be organ donors.

And I love that. Nicely done people.

So, last Wednesday I dropped by the Riverside Campus of the Ottawa Hospital at the crack of dawn to have Peritoneal Dialysis Catheters surgically implanted in my body. Y’know, I could have just stayed home and worked remotely, but I thought it would be fun to get some good drugs and have some holes cut into me.

Seriously though, my kidney function is dropping (somewhere around an eGFR of 15 and on the way down) and my doctors think it’s a good idea to prepare. I really can’t argue, even though I have been dreading being at this point from about 2008 onwards. Side note: I have learned from experience that sticking my head in the sand and hoping that a medical condition will simply go away does not work. Who knew?

This petition was started by my lovely wife in an effort to bring an updated petition to the Premier of Ontario, in this case, Doug Ford.

If you are living in the province of Ontario, please consider signing this petition. The life you save could be your own.

We’re done with petitions now, right?

This petition extends the idea of opt-out organ donation to the federal level. With that they could promote the concept to all provinces in this country, and save a lot of lives.

I find it very difficult to explain a concept that I find completely obvious, so I don’t know what more to say about this one.

More on change.org, people in need that are way ahead of what I had planned to start.

This one is about trying to improve the situation in all of Saskatchewan by implementing an opt-out system for organ donation, which would increase the availability of vital organs for patients across the province, saving a lot of lives. Not to mention improving the quality of those lives.

I want to see the same thing happen in Ontario. It’s a no-brainer for me. I haven’t a clue why in 2025 this has not been done.

I was looking at change.org, thinking about creating a petition to make organ donation in Ontario opt-out instead of opt-in. Seems that many people have beaten me to it.

I will post what I found in a series of posts, starting with this one for little Nash.

If you want to do some good, consider looking at some or all of these. They are all great ideas.

So, this morning I went to consult with a surgeon about Peritoneal Dialysis, specifically having PD catheters surgically implanted in preparation for Dialysis.

Ye Gods, I don’t want to do this. But I don’t feel like dying yet, so I guess I have to.

Surgery is now scheduled for early May. When I was asked if that was ok, I did respond honestly and said that, “none of this is ok and I’m barely holding it together”, but that’s not helpful so I followed up with, “sure”. I’m a nice guy that way.

So, this morning I go to consult with a surgeon about Peritoneal Dialysis, specifically having PD catheters surgically implanted in preparation for Dialysis. I had hoped that this day would never come. Now that it’s here, I am feeling a wide range of conflicting emotions.

Did I do enough to prevent getting here?

Did I push alternate theories, did we really find the cause, and is there still some larger problem looming?