I have no idea how I survived the past decade… I mean, look at those photos. Thirteen-years of health issues all put together like that, it’s remarkable I’m still able to perform day-to-day activities like a mostly functional human being. And those are just the ones I could find photos of… damn.

Despite its myriad of shortcomings, I’m alive thanks to the modern miracle that is the Canadian health care system — I know, there’s really no such thing, it’s all Provincial systems patchworked together, but they’re all Canadian provinces so we’ll go with that.

And I’m not broke or in debt because of any of it… well, no more than I would have been. That would be the miracle part of the System. Basically the last thirteen-years of health issues all started with a completely unintentional prescription drug overdose waaaaaay back in the first six-months of 2013 that eventually killed off almost all my kidney functions.

I spent ten days in May & June detoxing in Hawkesbury’s General Hospital (HGH), and my kidney functions were left at 13%… which is, in medical terminology, “not f*cking good”. At first, actually for the next couple of years, I felt pretty good despite everything. I was a little slower, I had a harder time walking up small hills without feeling winded, my joints felt like crap but, thankfully, I didn’t need dialysis.

I was, however, put on the transplant list, and had a stent implanted in my abdomen just in case dialysis became a reality. The problem was, I wasn’t getting worse. My kidney functions were toast because of an overdose. Don’t take those pills, at that dose, and I won’t get worse. That meant my name on that transplant list would never get higher… I needed a live donor.

After a year, I finally started looking for a donor, and wrote a long piece on Facebook asking for one. After I posted it, the local paper of record, The Review, interviewed me during the summer of 2015, and an amazing article was published… and people responded. One in particular, the daughter of a long-time friend of mine, was looking to donate a kidney to a stranger. She read about my need, and put me on top of her list. She went through all the physical and mental testing, and was found to be mostly sane and a match.

It wasn’t until early 2016 when my health took a real turn for the absurd. I began to lose weight which I, for some inexplicable reason, decided was due to my drinking Diet Soda. Which is just dumb. A loos of 5lbs quickly turned into 15lbs, then it was twenty over a month, turning into an 85lbs decline over 3.5-months. My legs stopped working, I needed assistance getting upstairs to the bathroom (it was actually easier for me to drive to McDonald’s to use their bathroom), I had to send my kids — then 6-years old and 16-months, to stay with friends because I couldn’t get them up and down the stairs, then, finally, it took every ounce of effort and strength in me just to get off the couch.

It just never occurred to me to call an ambulance or search out medical help… which, looking back, is just insane because of how far things had gotten. Eventually, a friend basically said “well, this is just dumb”, and finally an ambulance was called for me. I spent two days at the HGH as the doctors tried to figure what was wrong. Finally they sent me home with a walker and a commode — which I never used, I still went to McDonald’s to use theirs.

My parents, had been in China for a few weeks as my health problems got very serious, came home and found out how I had been living… they each spent roughly twenty minutes slapping me around, before finally calling another ambulance and taking the kids into their home.

When I presented myself in the HGH ER for the second time in ten days, I couldn’t walk, I had no strength left in my arms, I couldn’t get off the gurney by myself, my creatinine level (how kidney functions are measured) was over 450 — normal is roughly 60-80, and I weighed less then 175lbs. Four months earlier I had been a heavy, but fit, 256lbs. This time the ER doctor decided enough was enough, they put me into another ambulance and off to the Ottawa General Hospital I went.

It took days of poking, prodding, MRI’s, CTScans, biopsies, banging on my knees with increasingly larger hammers and getting no reflex response, changing out my meds, and physiotherapy, to finally get to a diagnosis that made sense to them…

“Acute uremic neuropathy” brought on by Stage IV Renal Failure. I was immediately sent to the Ottawa Rehab Centre, given a wheelchair, started a very serious rehabilitation program for my body, and eight-hours per night peritoneal dialysis (PD) for the kidneys. I was also told the chances of me ever walking again were pretty slim. The staff at the hospital actually started looking for disability-friendly apartments in Ottawa for me to live in, because there are only two wheelchair ramps in Vankleek Hill, and one elevator — there is just no place in VKH for physically disabled adults to live.

After four months of intense and difficult non-stop physical therapy, however, I did walk out of the Rehab Centre using two canes for support. I still wasn’t well enough to look after the kids, but I was walking and at home doing my own dialysis and visiting them every day. Four months after I got out, in January, 2017, Angie very graciously, gave me one of her kidneys. In order to stay close to the hospital for my daily checkups, I spent the next five weeks at a nearby home for the elderly — which charged $3600/month for their residents, but my recuperation there was fully covered by OHIP and ODSP… excellent food as well.

So that health experience was four years long, since then I worked very hard at the gym to put some healthy weight back on, but my health has continued to deteriorate since then… the neuropathy, both diabetic and uremic, have left me with no ‘touch sensation’ in my lower legs and feet, my balance is still messed up… I fell a few times last summer, and couldn’t get up on my own, in 2025 I was diagnosed with ‘deep vein thrombosis’, with blood clots in my right leg and lung, I had a wicked looking ulcer appear on my lower leg, there was edema as well. I developed cataracts in both eyes last Spring, with surgery over the past few months. After the falls, I began to experience intense pain in both wrists, but I was recently diagnosed as “stage four carpal tunnel syndrome” which will require surgeries to fix… all at no cost to me.

…anyway, that kind of explains why I haven’t really posted here in twelve years. Kind of. I do have another site that I’ve been updating regularly since I stopped here, it’s mostly photos of Events in and around Vankleek Hill… and there are a lot of them to take photos of.