written on June 24, 2014
We were supposed to hear last week whether or not my wife is approved as a living donor. Turns out the coordinator who was supposed to call on Friday was out of the office, and when my wife got hold of her yesterday she admitted that the Board that meets to approve living donors didn’t even meet last week. So now we still don’t know whether she's approved or not.
Since I’m on dialysis, I suppose it’s not a huge urgency to find out. The machine is keeping me alive right now, so as long as my catheter stays clean and doesn’t get infected, I can keep doing this. It’s just frustrating because I am debating whether or not I want to go back to work. Part of the decision will be made for me if I’m going to be having surgery in the next few months, because a transplant takes 12-14 weeks to recover from. So I don’t want to start a new job or go back to my old one if I’m just going to have to take 3 months off a few weeks later.
On the plus side, I have several job options right now. So that’s something. The biggest issue with going back to work is having to work until 11 or 12 at night. Usually those are the 12 hour days. I get paid overtime (one of the benefits of the union I’m in), so it’s not a financial concern. It’s really knowing that I’m going to be tired. A lot. And if my blood pressure starts getting too high, I’m going to need to lie down and rest. Something tells me I might not be as productive as I was before all this started.
I’ve been hoping that if my wife gets approved we could schedule the surgery and then I could figure out a timetable of when I could go back to work, or whether I could just stay on disability.
Speaking of disability, the state still hasn’t approved my claim. They keep saying they’re waiting for my physician to fill out his form, which he assured me he did two weeks ago. So what takes so long? It would be very helpful if we had a second income right now. I know my wife makes good money being an editor in reality TV, but I’d like to know we had a little wiggle room, which we don’t have right now. Plus, if my wife is the donor, she’s going to be losing several weeks of income at the same time I’m not working. If it takes this long to get a disability claim approved, I may as well just stay on it and not go back to work if my wife's the donor.
It’s kind of funny when you think about it – here I am, staying home from work to “rest and recuperate,” and yet the stress of living still manages to creep in every day. Between the concerns of our financial situation and having to raise two kids, there isn’t a whole lot of “rest” going on.
Part of me misses going to work though – most of our lives are spent in the office doing our respective jobs and when you don’t have that, part of you feels empty. Maybe that’s why my motivation is so lacking – I feel like I don’t have a purpose. Although I don’t miss being an assistant editor – I didn’t go to USC’s film school to be stuck as an assistant editor at age 40 (although there’s no one to blame but myself for that situation – I came to this post-production game way too late in life to expect anything else).
I still have the dream of writing and directing movies. But my last movie, “Pool Party,” really took something out of me. The whole process of making that movie turned out to be such a disappointment – the movie just didn’t turn out anywhere near as good as I had hoped it would (and trust me, if you can find a copy of it somewhere , it’s 92 minutes of your life you don’t get back – it’s actually pretty funny after a few beers, but when you’re sober, not so much…). Again, I take full responsibility. I rushed into production and didn’t have a very good script and then went through a massive depression after we finished filming that really tainted the movie for me. I think I’m afraid of undertaking another movie because of that – I’m afraid if it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to, I’ll sink into another depression. But who am I kidding? If I’m avoiding depression now, with all this happening in my life, why would making another bad movie get me depressed? I know something about myself, and that’s if I can stay positive through this ordeal, I’m pretty certain I won’t be depressed if I make another movie, good or bad. I’ve always wanted to be a director, I’ve just had difficulty thinking that I could get paid to do it as a full-time job. That seems to be a problem for me – picturing myself as a paid director. I think that’s been holding me back for years. I still read so many articles and stories about the making of movies and every time it shocks me that people make a career out of making movies. Where did I take the turn that pushed me off that path? In college? At Fox? Somewhere in my thirties? I doubt I’ll ever know.
I keep thinking that one of these days I’ll start writing something again. I have several scripts in progress that I’ve been working on for years. I’ve come to a point in my life where if I could work with someone else, someone who wants to be a writer and is willing to work on someone else’s projects, I could probably knock the scripts out pretty quickly. Basically, I’d rather have someone else write for me and then I could just produce and direct. But all the writers I know never want to write something I’m working on – they all want to write their own things. Which I completely understand. Hence the reason I’ve never written something for someone else. Although I’m not saying I’m a good enough writer to write for someone else anyway.
Would knowing I’m going to get a transplant in a few months help this decision to write? Would knowing that maybe I’ve only got ten years left if I have to stay on dialysis? (I’m not saying I only have a limited time left – I don’t know that at all. People live on dialysis for years and I plan on being here a long time yet.)
Is there something that would help me get back on the path of making movies? Is it a decision for me, or is it something more? Am I lacking inspiration? Am I lacking creativity? I don’t think so on either count, but maybe I’m fooling myself.
I keep saying I’ll figure it all out once we hear about whether or not my wife is a donor. But that’s just me procrastinating. The worst part of staying at home like I am is all the time I have to think about things. At least I’m starting to write these things down – years ago my acupuncturist told me that I should be writing in my journal every day just to get rid of all the stuff in my head. He said that stuff keeps you awake at night if it doesn’t have an outlet. Truer words could not have been said. How many nights do I lie awake thinking about all this stuff? Too many.
That’s the main reason I’m writing the blog – to just get the stuff out of my head. I hope that someone who reads this might be helped by my perspective, but if that never happens, at least I’ll be able to look through these words years from now and remember what it was like to live through renal failure and dialysis.
I just hope we hear something this week. At least then I would know whether or not I’m going to have transplant surgery. And if not, well, I’m scheduled to have the PD catheter inserted in my abdomen next week. That means I’ll be dialyzing from home in about a month. Something else to look forward to? I hope so.