i am finally starting to feel better and having a lot less pain. Thank you for your prayers. Sleeping is still a struggle, i cant get comfortable and i always feel a pulling sensation on the tube when i lie down, but i am getting used to it slowly.

today i had a post-op appointment with the PD(peritoneal dialysis/home dialysis) nurse to do a trail fluid exchange to make sure the port works good(which it does) and also to finally get my layers and layers of gauze, pads and tape changed to a much smaller dressing. it feels better already.

I have 3 long day sessions of training on aug 13, 14, and 15 and after that i am on my own, free to do dialysis at home~cant wait! And a few weeks after that i can get my other port in my chest taken out! Hallelujah!

for the first month i will have to do 4-5 fluid exchanges throughout the day, which takes about a 1/2 hour each. once i get that down i can start learning how to use a cycler that runs during the night while i sleep. which will be so nice.
I think thats all!

My Perfect World
Would be like this:

Everything covered in bubble wrap!!!
By the way things have been going lately i have developed an overwhelming fear and anxiety about what the next bad thing to happen will be. and as a way of preventing that i told robb that i want to lock up everybody who is near and dear to me in my house so i can watch and feel like i am protecting them from harm. But then as i was talking to a friend (hi al) today about that we realized that you cant even be completely safe in your own home so we came up with the idea of "bubble wrap world". What do you think? I think it might work, i better get busy. Oh and nobody better try to "pop my bubble" haha.

I have become a major worry wort. None the less...The Bible clearly teaches Christians to avoid worrying. In Philippians 4:6, we are commanded, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." In this Scripture, we learn that we should bring all of our needs and concerns to God in prayer rather than worry about them.
No worry is too big or small for His attention.

If there are worries in your life today, I encourage you to give them to Jesus. Let's do it together and just see what happens. whoa.. i have goosebumps!

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. proverbs 3:5 (thanks for this reminder jill!)

Check this out.

You can read the article here.

There was also another TV interview that aired awhile back on Fox 17 news, and i will try and put that one up too sometime, but it takes forever to upload.

*Please pray for a better night tonight, i had a little issue last night while getting up to go the bathroom, i was in so much pain that what should have been a five second walk to the bathroom ended up taking 5 minutes and by the time i got there i was so exhausted that i about passed out and had to lie on the bathroom floor for awhile. Not Fun. but i think i was a little overdue for a pain pill so i will make sure to keep an eye on the time tonight and not go too long without a pill or two! Hopefully that will do the trick but i would appreciate your prayers.*

I also got some blood drawn and it came back that my potassium is high(which could make your heart stop) so they almost made me go home and reschedule the surgery for a couple weeks later but i quickly put an end to that idea and convinced them to still go ahead with the surgery. They informed me that i wouldnt be able to have as high of a dose of the sedative anymore but that was okay with me, i just wanted this over with.

Ready to go~

~Love the hat~
Surgery went well. I guess i told them a couple of times that they were hurting me (which i can hardly believe, i usually dont like to admit to that..i try to be a toughie:) but i dont remember any of it!
I then went into the recovery room where robb joined me a few minutes later and took this picture of me(I cant believe i am showing this, maybe its the vicodin taking over:)

~I was soo out of it!~

He took notes on some of the funny stuff i said.
"Am i fat yet?" (i think that was b/c they told me once you start doing home dialysis you usually gain weight)

I asked him "whats that beeping noise?" like 5 different times, he said "it's monitoring your heart and i asked "whats wrong with my heart?" every time!

" I cant see good" (they had me take out my contacts before surgery but i dont remember doing that!)

Fun stuff!

I got to go home around 3:00 and i swear robb hit every bump in the road there was and drove over every railroad track(ouch) in all of grand rapids and missed every single exit we needed to take on the way home. i was not happy, but i forgive him now! haha. I wanted to be home soo bad.

I am still in quiet a bit of pain but the vicodin is helping. Check out my wound:

Thank you so much for your prayers, comments and emails, robb read me every one while i was in recovery.

Please continue to pray for a quick recovery and for a good, painless nights rest!

I thought that I would quickly update everyone about Katie’s surgery today. Everything went as planned and we are home. Katie is doing well but is tired and has some discomfort. Thanks for all the prayers and words of encouragement. Please continue to pray for a quick recovery, and that the new type of dialysis works well.

My surgery is set for tomorrow at 11:15 am. Please keep me in your prayers that it goes smoothly and for a quick and painless recovery.

blog status: robb and i have decided to keep the blog up and running the way it is at least for now. Switching over to a new site seems like a lot of work and its impossible to pick only 100 readers. And a few criticisers shouldnt be allowed to ruin it for everybody else. So for now, it stays.

But let me just put this out there to ward off rude comments~ this is my blog, i do this for me, not to please you or for attention (who would ask for this type of attention anyways??). if you dont like it, dont read it. you dont have to agree with everything i say or do but please just keep that to yourselves. The grieving process is a personal journey, different for everyone and this is the way i am doing it. No one has the right to tell me i am doing it wrong.

Thank you to the hundreds of you who emailed your invite requests and your sweet words of encouragement. you definitely had a lot to do with this decision. We really value your support.

I was just about to send out my first batch of private invites when i found out that there is a limit of only 100 readers. I didnt want to turn anyone away, everyone who emailed was to be added. I just thought that by doing this it would turn away those who were just being entertained and limit it to only those who truly care and were serious enough to email me their request. I just wanted a little more control over it and a way to limit some criticism.
But now i am in a dilemma, 100 readers is not enough and would require me picking and choosing which i did not want to have to do.
So for now hang tight while i decide what to do about this. I may look for a different blogging site which would possibly allow more readers or just make my current blog less personal(but that would kinda change my whole reason for starting a blog in the first place so we'll see) Still thinking. any suggestions would be great.
Stay Tuned.

I have chosen to make my blog accessible to invited readers only. To get an invite please email me at katielubbers@hotmail.com with your email address in the subject line and i will email you back with an invite. My blog will go private on Saturday July 19.

Here are some pictures of the coldstone fundraiser:




It was so much fun and we had a GREAT turnout! Thanks to everyone who helped scoop ice cream and to those who came out for ice cream, we really appreciate your support!!

And some pictures of our 4th of July Weekend:

walking off our dinner on the boardwalk in saugatuck

at the fireworks

me and pacey chillaxin' at the cottage

robb starting the fire

doesnt he look naughty? This is right after we caught him rolling around in goose poop...nice!

mmmm, hobo pies

playing war..i beat him twice!!

dinner on the deck.

We had a great time and enjoyed some much needed r & r.

I've got lots of updates as far as kidney stuff goes.

First of all, all the testing is completed now and I am officially on the donor list! I will be on a hold position until March 29, 2009 (one year from the day i started dialysis). After that day I am able to accept offers for a kidney. My family is able to start testing on December 28, 2008 to ensure that their results are really current.

On August 6 Robb and I will be heading to Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN for a second opinion. This is something we just feel we need to do mainly for peace of mind. There are just so many missing pieces to my case and i just dont feel 100% comfortable with anything until i hear from the best of the best. So please keep that in your prayers.

On July 21 I will be having surgery @ St. Mary's in GR. to put a new port in my stomach. It is called a tenkoff and it is a long tube placed into the abdominal cavity for peritoneal dialysis (which can be done at home!!!!) . Peritoneal dialysis is an alternative to hemodialysis (what i am on right now) - fluid is infused into the abdominal cavity, and it pulls toxins out of the body that way instead of using your blood.
So once that heals up good and i get back from Mayo i will be starting home dialysis called peritoneal dialysis or PD. I cant wait for that. I can get my life back. Most people feel much better on PD that they do on hemodialysis. So hopefully that is the case for me too.

I think thats it.

Thank you all for your encouraging comments and of course for your prayers.

I'm up late again so this might be just random ramblings. my body is tired but my mind wont give up.

I am in my deepest, darkest valley right now, I don't know why God keeps giving me more crap to deal with. How will i ever get to a peaceful place in my life when every time i get anywhere close to a step forward something happens to make me fall 10 steps back. At this rate i will never get anywhere with this grieving process. I have been cheated of that over and over again. Every month there is something new. Not only am I dealing with my own daily struggles i now have to pay the consequences of somebody else's mistake on top of that.
I am drowning. The waves keep crashing over me time and time again. I cant catch a breath. Every time I try to come up for air another wave crashes over me and pulls me under.
I am confused, I am angry, and hurt.
Did I do something to deserve this? It sure feels like a punishment.
Haven't I been thru enough? Why all of this, wouldnt just ONE of these issues be enough?
So many questions, so few answers.

I was sure that God would have shown me His plan by now and He would have wiped away my pain and saved the day but instead it is raining, no... storming even harder.
And i dont know what to do anymore.
I have tried being strong. I have tried staying positive. I have praised Him in the storm. And where has it gotten me?
Time will heal most of this, but not everything. Time will make some of it worse.
So what will make it better?
Tomorrow is a new day and after i hopefully get some sleep tonight i will wake up in the morning and read this over and probably regret posting it. i dont want to let anyone down by sharing my true thoughts, i will have better days ahead. but tonight this is my reality. my thought process.

***Updated @ 9:45 pm***
my due date. i have waited and anticipated this day for 9 months now. And its finally here, only instead of awaiting our baby's arrival we are left missing and mourning him. I have missed him so much but really how can you miss something that wasn't even supposed to be here until now? Now he really should be here, he should be home with us, we should be taking care of him now. Now the missing him has really begun.

then this is what we saw on the way home from the cemetery on our church's sign:

its been quite a day, thanks for all your thoughts, prayers, and cards today.

~blessings~

A private matter has left me devastated once again. right when i thought nothing else bad could happen to us, it did. please pray for us. hard. and please respect that i will not be sharing the details on here. its a personal issue but i just want to relay this for prayer purposes only.

My best friend emily gave birth to her beautiful baby girl, brooklyn grace, on sunday June 29 at 5:13 am.