Progress Report, and a Plea

It has been a typical spring week: rain, sun, snow, sun, snow, rain, sun...and that was just the last half hour. OK, not really. That was Monday. Today has been more sun alternating with clouds.
Rick has made the transition to peritoneal dialysis at home. It was not easy, and it still isn't, but he's getting more into the routine and it seems to be going a little faster and working a little better, as if his peritoneum is saying, “OK, you're really serious about this, aren't you?” and is starting to work with him.
He puts 2000 ml (2 liters – think a large plastic bottle of soda) of dialysate inside his peritoneum, after draining off 2000 ml, every four or five hours. This is the ideal. In fact, sometimes he can only drain 1200 or 1600 ml of dialysate; but last night he got 2600 ml out on his last drain of the day, and this afternoon he got 2400 ml out, so reality definitely does not conform to the ideal.
It's pretty much a full time job at this point, but at least we're not having to go to Seattle every day, which saves energy & money, not to mention time, and he doesn't have hemodialysis hangover. When he has hemodialysis he spends the next day recovering. It's hard on your blood to get pumped out of your body, run through tubing and filters, and then pumped back into your body. PD is definitely more gentle.
However, because Rick is doing it at home, he is not being monitored constantly for every level of every component in his blood, so PD is in that sense a walk on the wild side. The plan is to go in once a week, on Mondays, to check in with the Kidney Center and make sure he's OK.
We are now close to hitting financial bottom. We will have no income until Rick's disability kicks in at the end of May/beginning of June. He was hoping to get back to work once he was on PD, but that has not happened yet. Rick still has to go into Water District 19 to talk to Jeff, the manager. Rick says that tomorrow morning he will take out the trash, and then keep going, so watch out, Jeff. Rick's a-comin'.
Rick says that he is used to being poor, but he has decided he doesn't like having no money at all.
I will not passively hint around here, I'll come out and say it: if you've been thinking you'd like to send Rick some money, now would be a good time:
Rick Tuel, P O Box 238, Vashon WA 98070. “No amount too large, no amount too small.” Any amount would make me less afraid of losing the house.
We are most thankful to those of you who have already contributed to keeping our miserable butts alive. And on that strangled plea for dough I close for today.