So it’s more than six months since I received my wonderful new kidney.

….and I haven’t been back to the dialysis centre to clean out my locker, much less visit the people I spent so much time with there.

What’s up with that?

My wife keeps nagging me to go back and visit the people I dialysed with. I just don’t seem to be able to do it. When I was on dialysis, I used to joke with the nurses:

When I get my transplant, you’ll never see me again. I’ve spent enough time here for a hundred lifetimes.

Of course, at the time, I was joking, but now that the time has come, I simply refuse to go. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the people at dialysis. Maybe they weren’t the kind of people I would choose to socialise with, but we were all making the best of a bad situation, and hence got along reasonably well.

I think part of the reason I can’t bring myself to go back is my memories of when people I’d dialysed with got transplants, and came back to visit. I always (obviously misguidedly) thought that they were coming back to gloat. Whilst this was clearly not the case, I’d still pretend to be asleep to avoid the uncomfortable conversation:

Me: So How’s it going?

Them: Fifteen minute summary of every blood test they’d ever had since the transplant, plus a summary of all the things they could now do / eat / drink that they couldn’t before (and I still couldn’t do)

Me: Cool

Them: So what about you?

Me: Same shit, different day.

Uncomfortable silence

Them: Cool, well, better go talk to (insert name of patient on my left)

I just have more respect for the daily struggle in these people’s lives to put them through something like that.