As some of you might know, I do work as a consultant, however I also have an illness called Polycystic Kidney Disease.. I have been on Hemo-Dialysis for nearly four years now. That means I plug into a machine 3x a week for four hours at a time to have dialysis treatment. If you are interested in PKD information or want to contribute to a cure for it, please visit this with website.. http://www.pkdcure.org .

After four years, I am very high on the transplant list, and have gotten some calls about a potential kidney available to me. So far they have been some false starts but I am confident at some point it won't.. However during that wait I have a lot going on. I try to live my life as a normal person as much as I can. Working (even related to WPF and Silverlight) helps me to maintain a positive outlook and keep me going..

However there are sometimes complications to everything. I am not working this week due to two surgical procedures I have to have on Thursday. One is a parathyroidectomy. This is because I haven't been able to maintain the level of phosphorous control they have wanted me to over time. It causes the parathyroid's to go crazy, and excrete something called PTH. The PTH is very dangerous at high levels as one of the effects is to pull calcium out of your bones and into and through your skin and organs, causing nasty calcium deposits, which don't go away easily and calcifies your internal organs causing them not to work and hardening if not treated.. It's already causing some disfigurement on my neck and one of my arms. If it's doing it outside image what's going on inside..

So they are removing 3 out of 4 parathyroids (which shouldn't be confused with the regular thyroid that many people have all sorts of OTHER life threatening problems with). Also, they are going to attempt to fix my umbillical hernia. This I didn't realize I had until it started ballooning. I used to be a very heavy and weighted person (like 245lbs), I am around 190 these days and much healthier with a better diet etc (to fight the kidney disease). However when you loose fat you loose muscle, which I seem to in my peritoneal wall.

So I will be out for around two weeks total from work to get these taken care of.. During that time there probably won't be much in the way of Blog activity and the Michigan Interactive Designers meeting for September has been rescheduled  until I can attend..

I am having the surgery done at the fine facilities at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and I have a great team of doctors and caregivers there that do a lot of things that I consider almost superhuman in terms of effort. They have kept me healthy and living for the past six years when things weren't always looking like I'd make it this far..

As with any surgical situations there is always danger, and if again there should be setbacks or complications, I want everyone to know how much I appreciate them reading this blog and the fun I have had working and moving forward in life.

Thank you for your readership and your friendship. Much love and appreciation, your friend always..

-Don Burnett