Bring Me To Life

My friend Rezel was laid to rest the other day.

He was only 26.

I feel so sad because we started this journey of being dialysis patients almost at the same time. But he and I took on different strategies in dealing with our condition. Me, I skipped the denial stage and fully embraced the diet and lifestyle principles of an HD patient. He, on the other hand, found it very hard to adjust to our new lives.

We used to laugh about dying, joking and contemplating about death and how it will relieve our families of the burden of keeping us alive. But now that he is gone, and I see how his parents mourn over the loss of a child, I realized that parents will give anything, probably even their own lives, just to keep their children alive.

Though we joke a lot about dying, I never really thought either of us will die this early. He had just 3 years! My other friend, though she was a little older than us, she was 49, passed away about 2 weeks prior to Rezel and he was on dialysis for 5 years.

If i get to choose which way to die, and having seen other patients wait in agony before they expire, having a heart attack is I guess the easiest way out. But this does not scare me any less. Whenever I think about this, which by the way is often, I get into writing frenzy. Writing my last thoughts, if that would be the day I die. Mostly it's a letter addressed to my parents, to my brother, to Chris and to my younger cousins, and putting into words the things I say to God too.

That song Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko always makes me sad and cry a little (or much, depending on how high my toxins are). I never really think I get to grow old and have white hair. This disease have forbid me to think about old age. I am living the old age now with my meds and aches i feel.

I feel sad about growing old because I found someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. and it pains me to think that the rest of my life isn't really that long. That is why i make the most out of what i have now. but which frustrates me altogether because it seems like i have resigned to my fate, that I am not putting a fight for my life. But it's not really my call to stay longer or not, right? it's God's. So i ask God to provide for me well so that I'd live more and spend more time with the ones i love.

I really hope to get a transplant soon. I am tired of my dialysis life and resigning to this is like resigning to doom. I want to have a chance, to have a brand new start at life. I hope to think that this episode in my young life, being an ESRF patient since i was 23 was just a stretched out nightmare that I have woken up too.

I'd be like Princess Aurora when the day comes that I wake up, and I am no longer on dialysis!